Eyesight (1)
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May 22, 2007
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I have frighteningly poor eyesight. I'm nearsighted, meaning I can't see things that are far away. I have no trouble reading or staring at a computer screen all day, I just can't see words on street signs and the faces of people down the hall. I often wonder if I continually make enemies with people I work with because I can't recognize their faces. When I look down the mile-long hallway at work (seriously, my building is phenomenally long and straight), I sometimes see people in the middle or at the other end. Or at least I think they're people. They're basically just people-shaped blobs with no colors or distinguishing features. When I see people that far away, I usually look down or look away so I won't feel obligated to attempt to identify them. To a person halfway down the hall, that could definitely look like a "hey I know you but I don't want to acknowledge your existence" kind of look. If I get beat up one day on the playground after work, I'll know why.
I used to cheat on eyesight tests in high school. I knew I had horrible vision, but I wasn't willing to acknowledge the fact that I needed glasses. I functioned perfectly fine without them (minus the road signs and distant facial recognition thing) in most areas of life, so there was really no need to carry around a fragile, expensive object that would either make me look smart or gain me nicknames (I'd lean towards the latter). So whenever I got my vision checked, I would wait until the test administrator (usually the nurse) turned to look at the chart, and I would remove the eye cover and look at the chart with both eyes (my left eye is pretty much useless). This got me through at least 2 or 3 years of regular physicals.
Sometime in college, I finally admitted that glasses might help. I couldn't see road signs when I was driving at night, so I would get hopelessly lost and be late to things. I couldn't see the chalkboard in class, but thankfully this didn't affect me since no learning takes place in a college classroom. I got my eyes checked and got glasses, and now I can see. The only problem is that I leave them in the car so I can use them while driving at night, so all other times when glasses might be useful happen without eyesight. This is especially bad when two good eyes are a requirement, such as 3D or IMAX movies. #health
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