0

Second Sight

Posted by Unknown on 11/17/2009 10:57:00 PM in ,
I remember having perfect vision.  As a child, I was sharp eyed enough to be the one to find our pet bullfrog, Jeremiah, hiding in the bushes. 
Round about junior high, something changed, and the chalk boards became blurry.  Mom took me in for a vision exam, and the results were catastrophic…I was diagnosed with a need for glasses.
I remember the day I got my first pair of glasses, too.  Another catastrophic day…I discovered things I hadnt known for some time.  Brown leaves on trees, mold, bugs in grass.  I was horrified.  Even more horrifying was returning to school, and having to WEAR THE THINGS in front of my peers.  Teasing began.  “Four eyes”, “geek”.  Backhanded compliments began.  “I dont usually like glasses, but they look GOOD on YOU.”  I resigned myself to never ever being the pretty one.  Because I was a GATE student, I also resigned myself to never being popular, and to the concept of potentially getting beaten up often.

Luckily, I didnt get beaten up OFTEN, but by high school I had taken to being the “cool kid” to compensate.  I adopted a tough denim and leather rocker persona to compensate for this and other perceived failures (being smart, wanting to learn, being gay), complete with ditching, drug and alcohol use and smoking.  I still had to wear glasses if I wanted to see what the fuck was going on around me.
Throughout junior high, high school and college, I would try to not use my glasses wherever possible, but it seemed like I was always missing something…and for a hyper observant, slightly paranoid, human sponge of a young brain, this was even worse than sacrificing vanity.  Besides, I was tough enough and smart enough that I didnt need to be pretty.
Something odd happened in my perception over this period of time.  Because I hated having to wear glasses,  the world stratified for me into those blessed with perfect vision and those not.  That, in itself, is not particularly odd.  As I got older, contact lenses became an option and I considered them.  However, I am such a freak that it requires an entire family to wrestle a single eye drop into my eyes, so they didnt seem worth the hassle.  And I guess a part of me had grown stubbornly attached to the hated accessory.  There was one other little secret.  Whenever the world gets too hideously ugly for me, all I have to do is whip my glasses off, and the world becomes pleasantly blurred. 
But through this process, I divided people up once again.  Those vain and brave souls who wear contacts to repair their vision, and those geeky outcasts who either cant or wont.  I decided against vanity (or possibly courage) and simply became a glasses wearer, then never thought about it much again.  I knew that sometimes contacts people wore glasses, to give their eyes a break, or because they were out of contacts or had lost one or something, but it never occurred to me one had all that much of a choice.  One simply wore one or the other.  One was simply one or the other.
Many people have asked me why I dont try contacts and I tell them I have no time or energy for all that hassle.  Robyn has all but begged me to try them, and I have stubbornly refused.  Until now.
I had a casual conversation with Mark the Younger one day that opened my eyes, pun potentially intended.  Most of the time I see Mark, he has on his glasses.  He wasnt wearing his glasses and I asked him where they were.  He indicated he was wearing contacts.  I said I didnt know he wore contacts.  He said he did sometimes for some things.  It suddenly occurred to me that there were choices.  One wasnt locked into one or the other.
Today I went for an eye exam and tried contacts for the first time.  It was a totally different world.  I dont know if I can master this getting them in and out thing, and my eyes are pretty irritated because I’ve officially touched them more today than, oh, say, in my entire life.  But having them on was AMAZING.  I had true peripheral vision for the first time since childhood.  I didnt see the world through a frame.  I didnt have to strain my eyes to see, (my glasses are pretty scratched up right now, and nearly always get smudged), and sometimes had to gently remind myself to just change my focus, not move my head or eyes to “center them” in the lense. 
It was like the other part of the first day I got glasses…the part I didnt mention above.  The joyful feeling of being able to SEE what was happening around me.  I was so distracted by my new found sight I passed my house on the way home.  Looks different when you have peripheral vision.

|

0 Comments

Post a Comment

What do you think?

Copyright © 2009 Derivative Dribble All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek. | Bloggerized by FalconHive.