Nonsense, But the Blurred Vision Thing is For Real.
Yesterday morning my favorite optometrist was diplomatic. “I’d like to take just enough of that strain off your eyes,” he said. “They’re working awfully hard.; let’s see if we can give them a break.”
Which is what my last prescription was supposed to be doing, if I’d used it faithfully. I’m not great with math, but I’ve had to wonder about probabilities and trends as I’ve visited optometrists over the last fifteen years. Because each subsequent visit reveals that my eyesight has in fact worsened since the last time I visited. Blurred vision, exponentially. I don’t think this can go on indefinitely, without my becoming not only entirely blind, but possibly eyeless too. Empty, vacuous holes instead of eyes.
I suppose there would be balance in that though. My teeth are in even speedier decline; I could be both toothless and eyeless, all at once. Remembering one more alarming trend…hairless as well. Another riddle for Bilbo.
Yikes, that was dark. I’m really ok, nothing worse than gradual decomposition here.
On a lighter note, I speak the truth when I say this optometrist is my favorite. Picture this. A Hybrid of Three (I love hybridizing): the tall, tall farmer from Babe; stoic, solemn, gracious. Pixar’s lone chess player…the more vulnerable, sweet personality of the split (“Geri’s Game” film short). And the last remaining Knight Templar who guards the Holy Grail until Indiana Jones reaches it (“Choose Wisely”, he says, in tones sage and benevolent). My favorite optometrist is tall. Maybe he appears even taller because he is so very lean. He isn’t young. Which my hybrid model probably gave away. But he has the beautiful, angular, creased face of Farmer Hoggett, the patient aura of the Knight Templar. Also. I think he might have Scandinavian roots. There are lots of people in this part of Utah with Scandinavian roots. And (stay with me here) there’s a subculture within the Scandinavian root group, mostly generational (past fifty), in whose manner there’s a sort of… Distance? Soft-spoken propriety? A coolness meant not to alienate, but to keep apart? Which sounds the same but isn’t quite. My favorite optometrist is beyond tactful. He is…agreeably discreet. And he has lovely hands.
I know. I sound weird. Possibly, I don’t get out enough. My meetings with people…appointments where face to face conversation is necessary and sometimes prolonged… are always exciting for me. I savor them. There is so much to absorb. Stories to guess at and even watch unfold before my very eyes. I love trying to understand whoever I’m in the moment with. Banker, doctor, dentist, checker at the grocery store, architectural engineer ( a little foreshadowing there). Optometrist.
Ironically, my people interest is the catalyst for my relative solitude. Not everyone likes to be noticed, studied, interrogated. Imagine! Sometimes, I frighten away the very folks I’d like to get to know. So then I’m a bit lonely again, and more likely to be intensely interested in the next real person who has to clean my teeth, or ring up my laundry detergent. I’ve tried pretending disinterest. Peeking at people only when they’re not looking. Talking about the weather (verbal nonchalance). Maybe someday I will achieve the sort of blandness that never threatens.
Nah.
Anyway. Given the quiet kindness and impressive tallness (oh, and sagacity) of the optometrist, I found myself instinctively responding as I would to an admired teacher when he asked me if I could see better with this lens click, or with that on the blurred vision diagnostic machine (forgive my ignorance of optometric lingo). My mind raced, my eye squinted (you’re handicapped, remember, when you visit optometrists. Only one eye at a time, and it’s artificially dilated with nasty yellow stuff). I wanted of course to be honest about whether I could see better with the first click, or the second…but really, I couldn’t see much with either. Even though obviously, I should have. I felt like the only one at the party who hasn’t gotten the joke, the only one at the funeral who isn’t crying. The only one who hasn’t studied Plato. There had to be a right answer…what was it? In the end I mumbled that really, I couldn’t tell. I thought it might be ever so slightly better with the first one. “Hmmm.” he said. Clicked through more lenses, asked again if I could see better with This one, or That one. And I wanted so badly to Know. To See. But I couldn’t.
There’s further irony. It’s because my eyes are working so hard, trying so hard to focus with misshapen lenses, that I can’t see the difference between click one and click two. This is what the optometrist has told me. This is probably also why I feel as if someone has flung shampoo into my eyes every evening; they’re so darn tired after their full day of sabotaging my visual reality.
The miracle is that when I left the optometrist’s office with trial contacts floating in my eyes, I could see fairly well. After all. Somehow he managed to figure out what I need, even though I failed his quizzes miserably. I suspect he might have psychic superpowers, that he might be a Blink meister, reading the twitch of a finger for clues about near-sightedness. Ah, never mind… I can see! See individual leaves on trees. See names on street signs. And faces, in detail. My anthropological heart leaps. I can see faces!
Next stop, the architectural engineer’s office.
