A Matter of Vision

Back when I was a li'l Dave-El, around the 2nd grade, my parents received some conflicting assessments of my educational progress. 

One teacher thought I showed remarkable intelligence, that I was way smarter than the rest of my class and perhaps my parents should consider advancing me up a grade level.

Another teacher looked at the same student and arrived at the conclusion that their son needed to be held back a year. Most of that stemmed from my refusal to hold a pencil like normal people. Also I seemed frequently lost and confused. 

I cannot begin to describe exactly how I hold a pen or pencil except that, not it is not "normal". 

As for the lost and confused, well, maybe it was because I was having trouble seeing the board at the front of the classroom.  

Eventually (and I do mean eventually) it occurred to someone to have my eyes checked and it turns out I had an astigmatism.  

Maybe it was because I looked at an eclipse the year before?

I remember the day.  I was riding in a car with my dad. It was a bright and sunny day that turned quickly into a strange and murky twilight.  We knew the eclipse was coming, it had been on the news and there were warnings to not look at it. 

As mid-day turned into dusk, my dad reminded me not to look at the eclipse. 

But my curiosity got the better of me and I stole a quick glance. 

In that quick glance, I saw a black disk up in the sky with fire burning around the edges. I quickly looked away, afraid of what I might have done to myself. 

There is no definitive evidence of what happened to my vision was caused by my brief glance at the eclipsed sun. But I cannot dispute the timeline from the event to my loss of 20/20 vision. 

The impairment of my vision was slow, imperceptible.  But I needed to hold books closer to my face, sitting closer to the TV.  My declining quality of vision snuck up on me.  

I got my first pair of glasses with the cheapest thick plastic frames.   

The improvement in my vision was dramatic. I had become accustomed to seeing forests as blobs of green color like in a water color. Now I could see individual trees.  

I could blame the cheapest thick plastic frames I was forced to wear as to why I didn't get laid in high school. I'm sure I had enough personality defects to make me unappealing to the opposite sex without worrying about my glasses.

But when I switched to wire rims in college, my sex life improved a lot.  

I was working a couple of jobs in college and saved enough that when I needed to get a new pair of glasses, I was able to splurge for a nice pair of gold wire rims. 

It was around that time I first grew a beard.  When I went home for a visit for the first time with my new beard and my new wire rim glasses, my mother did not notice anything different. 

My dad eventually noticed the new look even if I did have to spot him a couple of hints. 

For 4 decades, I have stayed with wire rim glasses until about a month ago when I opted for a change, a pair of dark metallic gray plastic frames. 

And that is the tale of my vision and my encounter with an eclipse as a child.