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“Can blind people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” I posed this question to my seven-year-old cousin as matter-of-factly as I could. Considering the ridiculousness of the question, sounding serious proved to be pretty hard. My little cousin, Yafet, had just finished demanding that I make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now if he had asked me politely, maybe I would have consented. What you need to know about Yafet is that he is an extremely smart kid. So smart, in fact, that he has discovered that he can get away with being rude to my sister and me by sweetly telling our parents, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just a kid, I didn’t know.” They fall for it every single time. Whenever he comes to our house he swiftly touches one of our favorite games or toys and instantly destroys it. “Oops! I’m just a kid, I didn’t know.” This evening, for instance, he mercilessly tore up one of my card decks—cards I had carefully brailled myself.

***

“Don’t let Yafet see you,” my mom warns me as I head over to the kitchen to make a sandwich for my lunch the next day. It was the last day of Thanksgiving weekend and my mom and her sisters were socializing in the living room, while three of my young cousins run around the house. Yafet reliably demands to have whatever my sister and I have, regardless of whether he actually wants it or not. This evening he had already eaten lasagna and two slices of chocolate cake. Well, the official count was two slices. Several times he silently disappeared into the kitchen, so who knows how much he really ate.

I slipped into the kitchen unnoticed and brought out all the ingredients for a PB&J. As I worked, I could hear Yafet and his cousins shrieking in the next room. Every game they played involved running around shrieking—in addition to destroying things.

While spreading the peanut butter on a slice of bread, Yafet popped out of nowhere. His appearance was so sudden, it was like a horror movie. His head didn’t go much higher than the kitchen counter, but that didn’t make it any less threatening. “What are you doing?” he asks, though he could clearly see what I was doing.

“Making a PB&J,” I mumble. “It’s for my lunch tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he says.

He doesn’t say anything else, and I begin to relax a bit. So he’s finally starting to be reasonable by not asking for food he doesn’t need. Finished with the peanut butter, I start spreading the jam.

“Make me one,” he insists. After I don’t say anything, he decides to explain his case. “You know, if you don’t make me one I’m just going to tell Auntie Saba on you. She’s going to tell you to make me one, so you better make me one.” The worst thing about being blackmailed by a seven-year-old is that they’re almost always right when they claim that the grown-ups will take their side. Auntie Saba just might insist that I make him one, especially if he asks her sweetly and pretends to be very hungry. She also might do it to create some peace and quiet in the house—a kid chewing is quieter than a kid running around the house shrieking. So if I wanted to avoid playing personal chef for Yafet, I had to think fast.

“Yafet,” I said patiently. “Can blind people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

He thinks for a second, and then gives his answer, “No.”

“Yafet,” I continue, keeping all emotion from my voice. “Am I blind?”

“Yes,” he says, without even thinking about it this time.

“Well, then, if blind people can’t make PB&Js and I am blind, then I guess I can’t make you one, right?” Yafet just stands there without a word while I neatly put the two pieces of bread together. As I start closing the jars and putting them away, he turns and runs out of the kitchen. From the next room I hear his frantic wails, “AUNTIE SABA! Haben said…Haben won’t…”

A minute later, Yafet runs back into the kitchen all breathless. “Haben,” he says sternly, “Auntie Saba says you have to make me a sandwich.”

“But you said blind people can’t make sandwiches. So how can I make you a sandwich?”

“But I saw you make one!” he bellows.

“Oh?” In my mind, I decide that changing Yafet’s attitude towards blindness would be worth making him a sandwich. He understood that I, as his cousin, am completely capable of making him a sandwich. For seven years he’s been coming to my house and watching me do a million different things. Still, like all other kids, movies and books have taught him that blind people can’t do anything. For some reason or another, he had decided to ignore his own personal experiences with me in favor of believing the all-knowing TV. After all, he had just now seen me make a sandwich! I would give him one last chance, though. If he could get over the old stereotypes and acknowledge that blind people can make sandwiches, I would agree to make him one. “So you saw me make a sandwich? That’s interesting. Now let’s consider that for a second. Does that mean that blind people can make sandwiches?”

He actually takes a bit longer to think about it, and I begin to hope that he’ll start putting two and two together. But then he gives me the same old answer, “No.”

“I can’t make you a sandwich, then, sorry.” Yafet stomps his foot and runs out of the kitchen. Oh well. Some ideas are harder to learn than others.

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