I was hit with an epiphany this AM. While watching a show about light, regarded to be the fastest thing in the universe, I was amused to see again some guy trying to tell me that when you look in a mirror you are seeing what you looked like 2 nano seconds ago. I nano sec for light to travel to the mirror, and 1 nano for it to bounce back to you.
Why is that bullshit? Because you can hold your finger up next to a star with your eyes closed, open your eyes and you will see your finger and the distant star at exactly the same time. Ergo, there is something INFINATELY faster than light: the speed of sight.
What has this got to do with Annie and Keller? Nothing. But it did trigger the epiphany. All my life I have been in total wonder of the Keller story, but now I must pronounce it a fraud. I believe that Keller was blind, but NOT DEAF. How could she be taught to sound words? By holding her fingers to Annie's lips? Impossible. She would have had to stick her hand into Annie's mouth to feel the tongue where 90% of the sound textures come from. Even if that was possible, the act of touching the tongue would garble the words.
It was considered a miracle that a "dummy" could learn the alphabet back then. And I give Sullivan credit for teaching her the "finger reading" technique. But to this day there has never been another blind and deaf person to do what Helen is supposed to have done.
What more proof? It never crossed my mind 'till this morning: it's impossible for a person in a state of isolation to master speech and abstact concepts past the age of 7 .... I learned that years ago in a psycholinguistics class. A child's mind is like a computer when it come to learning speech in those 1st 5 to 7 years. There can be 10 different languages spoken in their house and the child will easily learn to speak them all.
This claim of isolation was verified 200 years ago by the study of the French Ferrel boy. It took years for him to learn "milk" and a few more words. He was NEVER civilized to any degree resembling normality.
According to the story, Helen was as a wild, unmanageable brat, much like the Ferrel boy. I don't buy it. I say she was a spoiled blind girl that was hard of hearing, but NOT DEAF.Kudos to Annie and Helen's parents for pulling a hoax that has survived without question for over a 100 years.
