Did my parents choose my name to be Ironic?

I often wonder why my parents named me Karina. If you ask them, they will give some answer about liking the name, but a small tiny part wonders if they did it for pure lifelong irony and humour. You see my surname is Lang...so take the K from Karina, put it with Lang, you get KLANG.

Now you wouldn’t automatically assume this to be ironic. However when I was born, my parents found out I had albinism. A pretty rare genetic condition. In a nutshell, I have no colouring and poor eyesight....and what happens when you have poor eye sight, you tend to bump in to things and it makes the noise KLANG.

I have walked into many things over the years. Patio doors, lampposts, door handles. I have tripped up stairs, down stairs, even across stairs (still not sure how that happened). I have run into people, banisters, glass doors, and even my brother at school. I have taken footballs, netballs, lacrosse balls, crickets balls, volley balls all to the face. There has also been many an incident on bicycles, (but I shall save them for another day). After all this and more, I think it is safe to say I have a pretty high pain tolerance, because every one of the injuries (regardless of if it drew blood) would make a resounding thud and KLANG noise.

Being visually impaired is no walk in the park; it is falling, slipping, colliding, and painful at times quest. I don’t know if my parents managed to teach me to laugh about all my mishaps through great parenting, (although I am sure they would take the credit) or if it just happened by accident, like supposedly my name. Either way being visually impaired can get you into and sometimes out of ridiculous and surreal situation.

I find these situations hilarious, and people I share them with tend to as well. So I thought I would write a blog and see how it goes. Read as often or as little as you like, comment as you please. (Just don’t mention my spelling or grammar, I know it is terrible), so until next time remember to find the humour in whatever form it comes. @klang_28