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Lisa's |
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Seeing is believing, so I’m told.
I don’t wear my prescription eyeglasses as I should.
Perhaps that explains my moderate degree of general skepticism.
It’s as good a reason as any other I can think of at the
moment, so I’ll stick to the silly notion for now. The burden of requiring eyeglasses fell upon me
when I could no longer read, or even see, my fifth grade teacher’s
handwriting on the blackboard. I
convinced myself the culprit was the sun’s glare; however, a few
subsequent cloudy days squashed my fabricated theory.
Even from the vantage point of the first row, it was all a
distant blur. My newly existing condition was examined,
diagnosed, and remedied. One,
two, three. I held the cure
that would put my squinting days to rest.
But not for long. My
pair of eyeglasses and I were no perfect pair.
I despised the mere thought of having to take them out of the
ugly case that was worn for shelter.
If intense squinting failed to get the job done of reading the
blackboard, only then did those glasses see the light of day. As the years marched on, I also required the
corrective lenses to watch movies clearly, and of course, learn to
drive. While at Department
of Motor Vehicles, I was instructed to read the letters on the eye
chart. Forget about reading, I could barely see them.
And so, my little helpers were sprung from their place of
residency. With their
assistance, I passed the test. Over the course of time, I’ve never gotten
used to wearing eyeglasses, although quite dependent upon them to see
properly. They haven’t
been accepted as a part of who I am.
And to this day, they are mostly worn when absolutely
necessary…basically, by law. In other words, while driving my car. Engine on, glasses on. Engine
off, glasses off. I fussed with contact lenses for one year, while
in my twenties, as I figured I had the answer to my never-ending
problem. However, I
realized that it was more of an inconvenience to see clearly all the
time than to simply wear the eyeglasses a small percentage of the time.
I’ve since freed myself from the dilemma of crawling on the
bathroom tiles, searching for that darn lens that slipped through my
fingers and got away. Instead,
I can now spend precious time handling some other minor disaster such as
the accidental spilling of an eight-ounce glass of grapefruit juice all
over the kitchen floor. While I’m not at ease with the thought of ever
wearing eyeglasses all of the time, I’ve managed to build up a
bearable tolerance for wearing them some of the time.
The idea of laser surgery has crossed my mind once or twice,
extremely quickly. I
don’t feel an urge to pursue the possibility in the near future, maybe
not ever. I’ve become comfortable with my routine.
Besides from operating an automobile, the choice to wear or not
to wear is entirely mine. On the rare occasions I turn on the television, I may or may
not reach for my glasses. So,
I see the screen blurry without them if I’m more than a few feet away.
It’s not as though I’m walking into trees, walls, or
telephone poles. Now and
then I do encounter someone waving frantically at me, while I’ve been
known to squint and try to make a positive identification of the fuzzy
image in my view. I’ve
since learned to casually smile and wave instead, as the practice of
squinting may produce permanent wrinkles.
During each incident, I seem to walk away from the scene with the
usual question I notice dancing energetically in my mind.
Who was that person, anyway?
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