These days I am walking like a drunken sailor, one of my eye’s cataracts is forever gone, and the other eye is still filled with whatever cataracts are made of, something like soap puddles, making my sight blurry and I have to stop and double check my path after every step. I reel from side to side while trying to sidestep Cody’s miscellaneous toys making me feel like my left side is two steps behind my right. My balance system has gone haywire, too, so I’m double checking everything. Alas, a couple more weeks and I’ll get my gait straightened out, walking like a normal person, but Cody’s toys will still be underfoot. He only has three toys, a chew rope, a stuffed squirrel, and something else that doesn’t have a name and he moves them around a lot, so finding and tripping on them isn’t a surprise.
If you knew me as a child, you would recall that I wore Nehi pop bottles as eye glasses, thick and unsightly, but at least I could mostly see. This week, however, I learned that I had been wrong all those years. I am now seeing things I never saw before, some good and some bad. Did you know that some trees have leaves and others have needles? And that almost all trees have bark? Did you know that road signs come in different colors? Did you know that our windows need washing and that Cody needs a bath? Yeah, that’s the bad, and I’ll get Cowboy Bob right on it.
I got my first pair of specs in the fifth grade. I couldn’t see anything but didn’t know it. My teacher, Mrs. Fifer, couldn’t figure out why I didn’t copy the spelling words off the black board, when they were plainly up there, a mere three feet away. And then, of course, I would fail the test, and Mrs. Fifer and Field Marshal Von Emeline would have a little chat, of which I was the main subject. I would be grounded for at least two weeks, maybe three. Eventually the school sponsored eye exams with the diagnosis: She’s nearly blind.
Along about my 9th grade, I started taking typing with the world’s best and most notorious typing teacher, Miss Cole. She covered the lettered keys with key-caps so we couldn’t cheat, and I couldn’t type my way to the pencil sharpener, meaning that Miss Cole called the Field Marshal once again. I pleaded my case, and had another eye exam, this time graduating to trifocals, still pop bottles. Miss Cole moved me to the front of the room, and my typing improved, guaranteeing that my father would push me toward being a faster-than-fire secretary in my next life. His idea, not mine.
The Marine Corps beckoned, and I applied but my eyes were too bad to join, BUT they called the Surgeon General in Washington DC and gave me an exemption. Woohoo. They all agreed I could see well enough to join the Corps and run pay records. Think about that! I hope none of the Marines found errors in their pay.
Someone, somewhere invented Lasix Surgery, and I jumped at the chance, threw away my old pop-bottles and went glasses-less, but had been so dependent on glasses that I continued to wear cheaters. Gradually, cataracts began to creep up and prevent me from noticing a lot of things, but today half of my eyes are working! How lucky I am and this time, I’m leaving my cheaters behind!
But wait! Cowboy is much older than I thought and maybe I need a trade-in, you know, another cowboy, younger and svelter. Just kidding, but that old lady in the mirror? She needs a face-lift.
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