Thursay, 24th July, 2008

Yet another modem got fried this week. We are still stuck with flipping dial up even though we are not out in the boonies and not even north of 7. To add insult to injury those eager Bell telemarketers phone at dinnertime on a regular basis trying to sign us up to their high speed. You'd think they would check to see if they can supply us with HS before they called, wouldn't you?

Got thinking about eyesight. I have bad eyesight but for ages I had no idea. I thought everyone saw the same thing I did. No wonder I love impressionist art, without glasses my entire world is decorated by Renoir or Monet.

When I was seventeen I started driving lessons. The instructor would ask me what a road sign meant and I would ad lib until we got close enough so that I could actually see the thing, which was usually about 3 seconds before I passed it. Eventually he cottoned on to this and asked me to read the number plate of a car further up the road. I asked if we could move a bit closer. In the end we were so close that the bonnet (hood) of my car was obscuring the number plate of the other car. The driving instructor drove me home. I think he was probably a bit freaked out as I had had at least half a dozen lessons by then. I got glasses but I hated them so I simply lived in my fluffy, blurry world for the next few years.

Then when I was about 24 my eyesight had deteriorated to the point that I knew I had to do something. So I got myself some contact lenses. A very nice, quite elderly gentleman did the fitting. This was back in the days when lenses were hard and it felt like having a piece of rock in there. Getting the first lens in was not too bad, but then when he wanted to take it out again I fainted, out like a light. Came round to see the poor guy trying to lift me up. I don't know what scared me more, the fact that he wanted to poke his fingers into my eye or the fact that he looked like he was going to have a heart attack. I was prepared to simply live with it in there for the rest of my life but after a while he did calm me down enough to remove it.

I considered glasses again but vanity triumphed and so I persevered, eventually getting the hang of contacts. I made some very interesting discoveries as a result. Trees do not have soft, woolly edges, they are covered in crinkly bits, and they are called leaves. I noticed for the first time ever that the city hall in the town where I had lived for several years has a clock at the top. Who knew? But the biggest revelation was men. To explain, near-sighted people look others directly in the eyes because we can't see your features. We just see a blur where your eyes are. I can tell if someone blinks because the blur changes, but without lenses I can't see eyes as such. Suddenly I realised that not only was I looking deep into strange men's eyes, they had eyes looking back. It does explain why I kept getting hit on at bus stops, I had no idea I had been flirting like crazy all those years. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Actually it has had a funny knock on effect. To this day I have great difficulty looking at people directly when in conversation. I look down, or away, or anywhere other than at their faces. In North America particularly this is an issue because looking away I believe makes people think I am being evasive or even lying. But I'm not, honest guvner! Added to which if I look down people often assume I am trying to read papers on their desk, upside down. Believe me, even with glasses I can't see them that well directly under my nose the right way up! My sister tells me I need to change that, that I must look at people but somehow I doubt I'm going to be able to change at this stage in the game.

On the plus side, because I realise how precious eyesight is, I appreciate seeing everything, art, architecture, colours, nature, everything. These days I switch between glasses and contacts and I have also discovered a lovely advantage to glasses. I am very squeamish and faint at the sight of ketchup. So if a movie or TV show suddenly has something gory happen, I take off the glasses and just watch the pretty blurry colours until it's over. :o)