I was born very premature and very tiny. The second-born of twins (my twin died three days later), my survival was in doubt for more than half a year. I spent the better part of that half-year in an incubator, which permanently buggered my vision.
Being born too soon may have done other things as well, none of them particularly good. I am about as flexible as your average iron bar, and to this day I seem to be incapable of walking "properly". But my poor vision has had the biggest impact on my life.
I had surgery to correct a lazy eye at the age of three, but the nearsightedness went unnoticed until the third grade. And why wouldn't it? At home, I spent most of my time buried in a book. A person looking at me would have suspected bad eyesight, but that thought never occurred to me...as far as I was concerned, the closer I got to the words, the closer I got to the world within the words.
Once I got to school, you'd think my eyesight would have become an issue. It didn't, because I always made a point of sitting at the front of the class. Yup, I was that most annoying of childhood specimens, the little boy who wanted to be the teacher's pet. And usually was.
Likewise, I'd always sit at the front of the bus. Not because I wanted to be the bus driver's pet, too...because I wanted to see where I was going, and because the kids at the front were less likely to be bullied. To this day, I can glance at a male of any age and predict with near 100% accuracy where he will rush to sit on a bus...
Okay, fine. You caught me. I knew I couldn't see very well. Of course I did: how could I not? But I was extremely careful not to let anyone else suspect this. People who are illiterate have coping strategies designed to shield their inability from the world; I developed my own. They were pretty effective, too. I even fooled an optometrist. More than once.
He'd always get me to cover my bad (left) eye first. Stupid of him. I'd read off a perfectly respectable four lines of the eye chart using my right eye, memorizing as I went. When the time came to repeat with my right eye covered, I'd simply read back from memory what I'd seen. I wasn't too obvious about it--I figured if I was at an eye doctor, somebody suspected something. So I'd slip in a few pauses for dramatic effect: "A, F...is that a V?...T...I think P..."
Why the subterfuge? Because I didn't want glasses. Actually, that's an understatement: I would have cheerfully been shot rather than be forced to wear spectacles. If I was shot, I could parade around school exhibiting the bullet hole and showing off how tough I was. If I (shudder) got glasses, all the bullet holes in the world wouldn't matter: I'd be a nerd anyway. In fact, I was firmly convinced that glasses would encourage bullets. Or at least fists.
So one day, my stepfather took me out for a spin, and suddenly asked, apropos of nothing at all:
"Kenny, what's that sign say?"
Whew, I know where I am. "Humberview Drive." So there.
Several minutes later, in a part of town I'd never seen, it came again.
"What about that one there?"
"What about which what where?"
"That sign there. What's it say?"
I haven't a clue.
"Umm...John, what is this with the signs?" I know perfectly well what you're doing, and right now I'm squinting my brains out and I have no idea what the heck that sign says...
I think I might have even said the word fuck. Silently, of course: that word said aloud would cause my world to temporarily end. But if ever there was a perfectly justified occasion to say fuck, that was it. Found out. FUCK.
"I...don't...know." Those were three of the heaviest words I'd ever uttered: just forcing them out completely drained me.
I was back at the eye doctor within the week. And this time the bastard had me cover my right eye first...
It turned out my vision was much worse than even I had suspected. I didn't just need glasses: I needed Coke-bottles. My first pair actually gouged my nose. At least one subsequent pair (the dogs ate two pairs: don't ask) had to be made in Tokyo. And yes, I was right: Insta-Nerd.
I had another surgery performed when I was eleven, another attempt to correct my lazy eye. John told me to count backwards from 100 as the general anaesthetic was administered. He bet me I couldn't get past eighty five. So I fought the knockout with every ounce of my being. They had to shoot me up again, and I distinctly recall being well into the sixties before my universe blotted out.
(...)
(...)
(hmmm ha hmmm hummm hah hummm hm)
(hm pound-pound hmm humm pound-pound hah pound-pound hm POUND POUND HMM! POUND-POUND!)
"Waazzzzzht?" POUND!! POUND!!
"Shhh, you're okay. Just relax. Can you stop that? It's okay, you're fine..."
POUND POUND "Hazzzut!"
I can't exactly say I woke up. More like the world came back to me, through a glass, darkly. I felt...padded somehow, like I was encased in four and twenty layers of insulation. Gradually the whiteness around me blurred into a nurse and I found myself understanding her English. This seemed very improbable.
"Back among the land of the living, I see. How do you feel?"
"I...uh...don't...feel anything."
"That's pretty normal. You're going to have a headache, though. You were whanging your head pretty good against the bars of the stretcher, there."
"Huh?" Vaguely I seemed to recall some kind of rhythmic pounding. As it filtered through my mind that I was both pounder and poundee, I began to feel the first stirrings of pain.
I'm here to tell you that whanging your head repeatedly against a hospital stretcher qualifies as an Excedrin Moment, whether you know you're doing it or not.
The double dose of anaesthetic had another effect: it completely eliminated my appetite. I had absolutely no interest in food for three days. On the third day, thinking I should probably eat something, I tried a meatball.
It bounced.
I mean that quite literally: it went down my throat and came right back up, as if it was made of rubber. Okay. Food most emphatically not required.
And the lazy eye? Still there. In fact, my eyes malfunction in so interesting a way that I was a test case for an intern at the University of Waterloo. A very confused intern.
See if you can follow the bouncing meatball here. I never look through both eyes at the same time. I can't do it. I use one eye to track things in the distance: at a point about a foot from my nose I unknowingly switch to the other eye. An observer can actually notice the change.
This means I can never get the full effect from looking through any time of binocular device, be it a microscope or a telescope.
Another side effect of the lazy eye: I can be looking right at you--from my perspective, at least--while you'd swear my gaze is off to the left somewhere. This little weirdity I can at least control, although it grows pronouncedly worse the more tired I become. Add in faulty depth perception--if you throw something at me I'm apt to reach for it about a foot to the right of where it actually is--and a moderate photosensitivity, and you can perhaps understand why I don't drive a car.
I just got new glasses a week back: something like my eighth pair. I'm told the left eye has actually improved a little since my last fitting. My right eye, once my 'good' eye, has been getting progressively worse since childhood and now nearly matches its myopic mate.
These glasses are a wonder: Transitions, by Essilor. They darken when exposed to sunlight and they block out UV rays. They also eliminate the need for clip-ons (which I used to constantly misplace) and wraparounds (which worked very well, but made me look like RoboCop). And they look pretty good on my face.
Not as good as no glasses would look, of course. Even as an adult, and a married one at that, I'm still self-conscious about wearing specs. Silly of me, I know. I looked into laser surgery and it turns out my corneas are too thin. Contacts are out, for two reasons: one, I could never summon the courage to stick something IN MY EYE!!! and two, if they ever fell out, I'd never find them before I stepped on them. Kee-RUNCH!
So I'm bespectacled until I die or they pioneer eye transplants. It's become a part of me: so much so I've "lost my glasses" while they were on my head. There's one of life's little nonplussing experiences.
Every once in a while, I ask myself weird questions. (The better to come out with wierd answers, my dear...) One recurring question over many years was this: If you had to pick one, would you rather go blind or go deaf? Perhaps because I'd resigned myself to eventually going blind, I railed against the very thought of losing my hearing. No more music! Now that it looks like I will maintain some vision into old age, I find myself more likely to value my eyes--as flawed as they are--over my ears.
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