The Blind Side

On my last English class, I had two assignments: the first one was watching with the class “The Blind Side”, and the other one was making up this essay on the subject. It is curious that being the case that am talking about an English homework, the tough part here is not to write, but what to write about.

One funny thing is that they mention and trace a parallel between the male protagonist (Big Mike) and one of the characters that I got to see in cartoons from my childhood that remained in my head: the story of Ferdinand. Which basically was a loving bull had a really tender heart and loved the flowers, who was caught in a moment where he made such a big mess due to a sting from a bee. That wrong perception made some Spanish ‘toreros’ think he was the tough guy they needed and they just went thru pain when they found out that not only Ferdinand did not push his horns against no one, but he was in a trance with the beauty of the flowers that the crowds bestowed over the ‘torero’. The cartoon ends when he has a happy ending with he dwelling in pastures, smelling the flowers.

The point from the toon for me was: one cannot assume who anyone is, by taking as base the behavior of someone  under an exceptional situation (the bee sting) to what the average of his life is (loving the gardens and smelling the flowers). Is there a real parallel between “Big Mike” and “Ferdinand”? Let’s see: Mike lived his average as a homeless person, under poverty, without education and surrounded by vices as drugs and violence. Those were the ‘pastures’ of this Ferdinand. Where are the ‘stings from the bee’? One good day, he finds himself walking on the same path than Leigh Anne Roberts, who happens to be a rich wife, and decides to open her house, with her family, to help him. That is truly exceptional.

I recently saw dying someone who was homeless. He wasn’t as quiet or as good as and was not fortunate enough to get the sting from the bee that Big Mike had. Some friends and I fought for years to give him a better place, but this Ferdinand was used to another flavor of ‘pasture’, and did not know how to react to the ‘bee sting’. I’ve been too close to people that once caught on the web of drug addiction, have a difficult time to come out. According to the definitions (am a newbie in sports), the blind side is the term used to describe: “the area behind a player [.. ]  because the player cannot see anything that is coming at him from behind”. Funny that, in a movie about hope, we it was not considered that Big Mike’s situation is so out of the box and the Ferdinand people is not exactly getting flowers. I guess that is a blind side too.
In my case, I’ve devoted more than 20 years in helping in several situations people on a wide range of circumstances that need help.  What flowers (reactions) do we, as Ferdinand viewers throw to the arena? What kind of smell do our flowers have… do they smell good or do they stink? How many flowers have we cultivated in our garden? Do you plant them (I mean, you genuinely feel like doing something), or you got them from somewhere else (be cause everyone says its important)? Maybe, the real ‘blind side’, is that we haven’t done some much for Ferdinand beside watching him jump around vexed. I just made the second homework. We all have the task of making a garden for the class of life.



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