Kansas City News Blog

Since it's been a while since we've heard about Union Station's uncertain future, I thought I'd take a tour of its current attraction, Dialogue in the Dark, Thursday afternoon. The tour isn't going to save the place -- and it's not supposed to -- but I can tell you that even without the thrill of wondering whether everyone around you is having a very quiet orgy, it's still worth a walk-through for the $22 ticket price.

Apparently, a person can't just go through the exhibit alone, so they made me hang out and wait to join a group scheduled at 2 p.m. I can't really complain about the 20 minutes spent hanging around the exhibit entrance, because that gave me an opportunity to see a security team following a dog through the exhibit halls, while the poor guy being dragged around with one hand on the leash yelled in his walkie-talkie.

"Checkpoint 3 has been cleared! I repeat, checkpoint 3 has been cleared!"

This unsettled the volunteers and myself. "Those aren't our guys," said the man who'd taken my ticket. "There couldn't be a bomb threat could there? They'd tell us to get out if there was, right?" His question was never resolved. The dog ran back out of the exhibit space, followed by four or five security guards, all muttering about checkpoints and color-coded areas. Maybe they found some drugs later? I hope so.

Anyway, about the time this ended, the group they wanted to stick me with showed up: 4-H Club teenagers from Des Moines, Iowa, in town for some meeting. They'd already been to the Steamboat Arabia, which must have excited them, because the poor volunteers were forced to yell for attention so they could tell the teenagers to turn off off their cell phones before entering the absolute black space.

The volunteers split everyone into manageable groups of six. "Hope I don't stab anyone in there," said a kid in my line. I left that group. The volunteers started lining up three of the club's girls behind me, and then we were joined by one of the club directors, a frazzled woman in her 50s.

I would come to despise this woman because of her relationship to our sixth member, a kid in a wheelchair. Despite his protests and headshaking, she dragged him to his feet and pushed a cane into his hand. Not a special cane because he couldn't walk, but the type of cane that blind people use, which we all had.

Here's the stuff that's pertinent to the exhibit itself: You stumble around a lot. You run into people and excuse yourself quite a bit. Our group's tour guide told us that, since the age of 6, he's only been able to make out the difference between light and dark. And though the exhibit does simulate blindness, I wondered if we were really experiencing the world in the same way blind people do. That's because we walked through scenes (I'm not going to disclose anything more), and I kept imagining my own visuals based on everything I'd seen in my sight-filled life. It was definitely a worthwhile experience.

And that's really saying a lot from me, considering the horrible, horrible woman I had to go through it with. The club director kept grabbing me in the darkness, and when she realized it was me would repeat, "Oh it's so akward to have someone who's not in my group here." As if I was so at ease with all of them.

I didn't truly hate her until about halfway through when she exclaimed, about the kid she'd forced into the exhibit: "Oh my god, I didn't even think about it, but he can't really feel because of his condition. And he's hard of hearing and he doesn't even know which way is left or right in all this! I can feel him sweating! Everyone, this is very painful for him right now, he's very afraid! You should appreciate anything God's granted you!"

I wanted to stab her in the eye with my blind-stick. I could only imagine what a cross-state field trip would be like with this woman. I pictured her strapping the kid to the top of the mini-van just to tell people he was uncomfortable. Or rolling him into traffic so she'd have a reason to scream in people's faces.

The point is, if I can have fun with this freak, you can probably have a lot of fun if you go with friends. When I got out of Dialogue in the Dark, there was a couple making out on the bench in the waiting area. They probably had a great time. -- By Peter Rugg