Unabashed

I’ve always had good eyesight. 20/15 when I was young, 20/20 when I got out of the Navy in ‘93. When I was 14 years old my family took a vacation to the Gulf of Mexico and I got to ride with my sisters in the back of a truck which was covered with a camper shell. When we arrived in Florida, my eyes were tearing up a lot and burning, and I couldn’t bear the sunlight. My sisters were fine, but as it turns out I guess I was sitting in a bad place in the truck and got carbon monoxide poisoning, which basically gave my eyeballs a nice chemical bath. It didn’t affect my vision, but I became extremely light sensitive, and before I could enjoy the first moment out of doors on that vacation my mom had to run to the store and buy me a pair of sunglasses. I’d never worn sunglasses before, and the pair she dutifully picked out for me were, let’s say, less than stylish. But fortunately I was at the beach, a place I’ve always loved, and my socially awkward initial reaction waned once I was running about in the waves. Since then, I’ve always worn sunglasses, much to the chagrin of some old-school type folks who think I’m “gettin all Hollywood,” or, translated, they think I wear them because of some sense of vanity. I do like them, sure, but I’ve forgotten my good ones before (when I left the house in the rain or at night) and had to rush out and buy an el-cheapo pair just to get by. Usually by the time I’m at the store to buy them I already have a migraine and I’ve driven the whole way squinting as much as possible with my hand shielding my eyes from sunlight.

My light sensitivity is something that’s never been really a problem. I take care of my shades and I generally keep them with me at all times. Even if I have to pull a late-night shift, I’ll take my shades just in case something happens and I’m out after the sun comes up. But lately I’ve been having other problems with my eyes. I’m getting a lot of little floaties and having a little trouble reading a digital clock or the DTV menu on my television, which is a 45″ flatscreen LCD, big enough, you would suspect, to have a menu I could read. And now, the mia culpa: two weeks ago I took, and passed, the test for my Alabama boating license. I went to get my driver’s license updated, and found out I had to pass a visual exam first. There was one of those boxes with the viewer fitted on top of it, which I had to look through and then decipher a line of incredibly small text. And really all I saw were little specks of fuzz. (This next part should make you feel really great about driving the highways of Alabama.)

The examiner said, “Read the text.”

I said, “Uh, okay. V?”

“Right.”

Now emboldened a bit, I said, “D.”

“Try again.”

“G?”

He shook his head. I pulled my head back and blinked several times, trying to focus. I can do this, I thought. I put my head back to the viewer. “C.”

“Correct. Next?”

It went on like this for the next few minutes, with me sweating, terrified I was about to lose my license, basically guessing my way through the entire test. I remember the only letter I could distinctly read–and even it was a little bit blurry–was the V. Everything else was just a fuzzy speck that could have been anything. On the last letter I think I must have guessed six times before I finally got it right, and without a word the examiner went to creating my new license. But me, I was scared.

Four years ago my vision was tested 20/25, not great, but not too bad. So I set up an appointment for today to get my eyes examined and the doctor gave me that terrible diagnosis: “You’re near-sighted.”

Gulp. “What’s my vision?”

“Corrected?” she asked.

“Just regular.”

She looked at her chart. “20/40.”

And I thought, My God. So fast.

Now I know that this isn’t really a big deal. My wife has had glasses since she was in 3rd grade, and hers are really strong. But from my perspective, a guy who’s always had perfect vision, the realization of what is happening isn’t just about my eyesight getting worse, it’s about my mortality, it’s a reminder that I’ve only got so long in this life, and then it’s done. And I’ve got two little boys who, had I followed a more natural path, would be sixteen or eighteen years old now, but instead they’re 1 and 3, and I’m 39, and feeling old.

I picked out a set of frames that my wife agreed with, made by my old reliable Oakley brand, and after a few hours went to pick up my new glasses. And suddenly the world was clear. It’s amazing. I didn’t even know I had that much of a problem, but when I put the glasses on it was like one of those Claritin commercials, where everything is fuzzy at the beginning and then a layer is peeled away and becomes defined. I realized I had been living in a high-definition world with analog equipment.

I’m fine with anything up close. I can still read and work on the computer without glasses, and I can see well enough at a distance, but I’m wondering now why I would want to. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the leaves on trees, looking at the early-rising moon, realizing a level of depth and clarity I can’t remember ever having before. So here’s Me2.0, wondering at the new world of high def around me.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: carbon, def, definition, glasses, high, monoxide, poisoning, shades, sunglasses, vision