This isn't a hugely interesting story to most of you, I'd think, but I'll post it anyway. I'm part of a team working on a fan project for the webcomic Homestuck; another member of the team is a certain girl who this story is about. She and I found out that we have a lot in common and we quickly became good friends. We actually started jokingly referring to each other as siblings; it seemed a fitting way to describe our relationship, because we're very open and trusting with each other, but in a platonic manner, which is fortunate because she has a boyfriend. One of the things we realized we have in common is that we live in the same state, and eventually we decided that we should meet up in person. I live in the town where she grew up, and she was quite nostalgic. Another important piece of information is that one of her favorite characters in Homestuck is Terezi, a blind alien girl, and she'd recently purchased a shirt based on Terezi's. (There are such shirts available to purchase for all of the trolls and kids; it's one of the ways Hussie raises money to pay for all the bandwidth the comic needs.) We started talking at one point about what it would be like to be Terezi, or any blind person, and I mentioned that I was interested in the subject. Eventually, we decided that she should spend part of her visit blindfolded; she was pretty enthusiastic about the idea.
She arrived at about 1:00 PM, as we'd planned; we got lunch at a restaurant, then went down to a park she'd wanted to visit again, where she had gone often as a child. It was a long walk, but neither of us minded. While we were there, an ice cream truck showed up. Usually, their ice cream is mediocre at best, but she wanted some anyway because nostalgia. I noticed that they had cherry Italian ice, and decided to get one of those, which got her excited. She was wearing her Terezi shirt that day, and Terezi has the ability to smell and taste colors and considers red the most delicious, so she got one of those too. Silly, yes, but neither of us cared. We started back to my house, eating ice cream. A few minutes later we were walking by a large open yard with some large rocks in it and decided to wait there sitting on the rocks until we finished the ice cream. This was the first time I blindfolded her. She was comfortable with this, and seemed to enjoy it. Admittedly, we got some weird looks, with one woman actually stopping her car in the middle of the road to stare at us. (It wasn't a busy road; hers was the only car there at the time.) We stayed there for a while, until we ran out of ice cream, talking about things, mostly Homestuck and how she felt to be blindfolded. When we were done there, I had to take off her blindfold; we needed to cross a road and that seemed too risky. She was disappointed but agreed with me. Later on on the walk home, though, we found ourselves on a quiet side-street, and I blindfolded her again there. She was nervous this time. She asked me to guide her by the hand; I did, and it didn't seem awkward, honestly. I offered to take off the blindfold, given how nervous she seemed, but she told me not to, and got over her nerves actually quite quickly. Initially she was walking at about half-speed and had her other hand out in front of her so she would know if she was going to run into stuff; five minutes later she was walking normally and was quite content to trust me.
When we got to my house, my mom was around, but Dad was at a tutoring job. We ended up in the back room of my house, with her sitting on a piano bench petting my cat, and me sitting on the couch on the opposite side of the room. When Mom left to go to the store, it was obvious what to do; I blindfolded her for a third time. For a while nothing was different except that she couldn't see anything; we just talked and pet cats as if everything was normal, which honestly it felt like it was. I then asked if she wanted to go to my back yard. She said sure, and went to take off her blindfold, which I immediately told her not to do. She said she didn't know how to get to my back yard, so either I'd have to guide her there or she'd need to be able to see. I disagreed and told her to find the door herself. She tried, and eventually found it, after ending up in the kitchen for a while and bumping into some chairs and stuff. (Watching a blindfolded girl trying to navigate unfamiliar surroundings is pretty entertaining, honestly.) When she found it, though, she didn't realize she had. The door is made of glass, and is right next to a large window which doesn't open. She asked me if she'd found the door, but at that particular time she was touching the window, so I said no, which was technically true. She sighed and started searching again, and got completely lost. She finally found it by accident.
The blindfold didn't come off just because we were outside, of course. We fooled around there for a while, mostly with me sneaking away from her and her trying to find me. Eventually, though, she asked if we could go see her old house, which is another place she obviously wanted to see again. I said sure, and got the address from her. Neither of us even thought of unblindfolding her, though eventually we had to because we needed to cross a busy street. She stayed unblindfolded for a while. We got to her old house and looked at it, with her being nostalgic again. I then pointed out that we were near the elementary school we'd attended (though we hadn't known each other then, and weren't even in the same class as she's two years older than I am), so we went there.
After looking around the school for a while, we ended up on its playground, which seemed much smaller now than when we were in kindergarten and stuff. She decided to get on one of the swings; I joined her on an adjacent one, and we swung for a while and talked. Eventually I suggested that it might be fun to swing blindfolded. She didn't say anything, but stopped, retrieved the blindfold from her bag, and put it on, then resumed swinging, smiling. We later made our way to the other playground equipment, which she hadn't looked at much. She decided to climb on it. Understandably, she was a bit nervous again, because of the possibility of falling off an edge she couldn't see, but I gave her clues about her surroundings so there wasn't any actual danger. Besides, even if she had fallen, it wouldn't have been far enough to cause more than a bit of embarrassment. I guess that, as she couldn't see how high she was, she assumed she was much higher than she actually was. At one point, with some encouragement from me, she jumped off one of the platforms, which was designed for jumping off. This scared her, and indeed she landed wrong and fell, but she laughed about it and said it was really fun. I then took her to another part of the playground, with some very oddly-shaped climbing things. There were four of them in a row, with the last being next to a slide. I brought her near the one furthest from a slide, facing the slide, and told her that there was a slide in the direction she was facing and that she was to get to it without touching the ground. She had exceptional difficulty, but made it, and refused any hints or other help, and then decided to do it again, so she must have had fun.
We concluded this part of her visit with a walk through the woods near the school. By this point, she was completely comfortable with not seeing. Being blindfolded and led by the hand by someone she'd never met in person before apparently didn't bother her at all. It didn't even enter our conversation; we talked about Homestuck fanfiction, mostly. We eventually decided to head back home, though, as it was getting late and Dad was going to barbecue stuff. (Why, incidentally, does that word not have a "q" in it?) She asked to be able to see on the way back, because she wanted to see what she'd missed. I said sure, of course, and took the blindfold off her. I was considering putting it on myself, and said as much, but decided not to because there was too much of a chance of us getting lost, as she didn't know the way back. Now, we'd been using a bandanna as a blindfold, which is an important detail. I decided to take a risk, and suddenly grabbed her wrists and crossed them in front of her. She asked if I was going to tie her wrists together, and I said yes. She smiled and said she wouldn't mind, so I did. It wasn't anything terribly strict; she could have gotten out if she wanted to, and her comfort was the biggest concern for me. Still, she didn't try to escape at all, and stayed tied until we left the woods, when I let her go. We went home and ate dinner, and then she finally had to leave.
She'd been with me for nine hours. At least four of those hours were spent blindfolded, and she was thrilled with this. We had a great time. At no point did romance enter either of our thoughts; we were two people having fun, and nothing more. That's exactly how we wanted it.