Two sheriff's deputies died last Wednesday in a helicopter crash, so all my usual morning news has been pre-empted by their funeral Mass. I didn't want to listen to the overly long hymn (what is it with how Catholic choirs feel they need to sing every single verse?) so I switched the TV to a rerun of Little House on the Prairie.
It's the episode where Mary goes blind. She depicts blindness by fixing her eyes on a point in space, and talking to it instead of the person whom she's talking to. No actual blind person does this; all of them can hear where you are, and face you when they talk to you. (It's rude otherwise.) But for some stupid reason that I've never understood, actors do this and somehow it's the audience's cue that they're playing a blind person.
Give you another example—have you ever seen The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke? Patty Duke, who plays Helen Keller, not only does this; she keeps her head pointed at that point in space, even though nothing she does has anything to do with it. And she got a freakin' Oscar for this. Good Lord.