Vision

Sam and I had eye exams today.  My eyes were dilated, and it's still hard to focus on this computer screen, so this post might be brief.  We both checked out well, which is always a relief.  I mean, who knows what could be found with all those optical machines and prisms and scalpels?  Okay, there weren't any scalpels, but a good vision exam can still be scary.

I got my first pair of glasses when I was in third grade.  It's no fun at all being a little kid and having to wear glasses.  Especially if you happen to be smart.  And to make matters worse, my glasses frames were a weird color pink.  I envied my best friend's glasses, which were blue.  (Those were pretty much the only choices then, blue or pink.)  By high school, I had brown frames, but having to wear glasses as a teenager proved to be even worse than wearing them as a child.  Making out with boys was beyond awkward.  Enough said.

I began an exercise in subterfuge, breaking my glasses in many different ways, thinking that eventually, my parents would tire of replacing them and allow me to get contact lenses.  That didn't happen until I was 17, and there was a caveat.  I could get contact lenses only if I agreed to enter the local beauty contest.  Trust me, I was no beauty queen, but I would do anything to be rid of the hated glasses.  My acquiescence proved to be too easy.  My parents also held the procurement of my driving permit over my head.  Again, I agreed to the humiliation of parading myself in front of the judges.  And I was wearing contact lenses when I did.  And the next day, I got my permit.

And then 35 years of the painful experience of getting dust or dirt or sand in my eyes ensued.  By the time I was 50, I would come home from work and tear the horrid lenses out of my eyes and rub them to death.  At 51, I gathered all my courage and got Lasik surgery.

Like a successful hemorrhoidectomy, Lasik surgery is nothing short of a miracle.  It's been 13 years of 20/20 vision.

I can see clearly now sang Johnny Nash, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley.  (Love that song.)  Vision is a wonderful thing.  I am in love with my 20/20 rating.  And I am hopeful that I have vision that pertains to something beyond the performance of my eyes.