Playing Pop-eye. Or at least trying to. Each child needed to wear an eye patch alternately over each eye...to test each individually. And I was the one that got to put those on them, for the most part. I wore one myself to again try to make them at ease, but it was more of just a way to be a goof. Some kids didn't mind them at all and some wanted nothing to do with them. Would not even let me get close to stretching out that little elastic around their cute little heads. And those that may have had some sort of early site problems were the smartest of all...they would do the darnedest things to try and peak around the covered eye! I got the impression that for those, putting that patch over what may have been their only clear seeing eye was akin to putting them in a pitch black room. It seemed to be physically scary for them. Enlightening for me. And never underestimate the power of a dinosaur or lady bug sticker to get a child to wear an eye patch!

There is a point here. It is the impact of good vision. I guess that's why I was there today. I can remember the day, as a 7th grader, that I got my first pair of glasses, as if it was yesterday. Driving home from the optimetrist, I can still remember seeing the individual leaves on the trees as the car motored down the streets of LA. Each one. So green. So individual. But for some reason, the high was quickly blown by the reality of being 4-eyes at a junior high that already seemed so foreign and far away from the comfort of elementary school. That's a whole other story. My now enhanced geekyness led me to pretty quickly put the new glasses in their new glass case, insert both into my brown paper lunch bag, and ditch the whole package into the dumpster in the outdoor lunch area not long after getting them. Never to be seen again. And leading to the inevitable lie to mom and pop, "I just lost them". I guess I've carried that fib around long enough.

But I learned my lesson. I really did dig seeing well. It took another year and a move to a new city to get that second pair of specs. And I can remember that day very clearly too. The white chalk on the green board in the front of the room LEAPED out at me. It was an electric neon white! And I haven't gone vision aid-less ever since. While I'm currently in glass-mode, I've tried and enjoyed contacts of various kinds (hard / soft / daily / extended). And I bet that one day I'll even try going under the knife to get it permanently fixed...it seems like lots of folks are going that direction now.

And that's the Vision of VO. I yam what I yam.
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