I can see clearly now

Well, actually, not RIGHT now, but check back in three month...

All my life I have been myopic, which is my excuse for some of the short-sighted decisions I’ve made.

I could see things up close clearly, but not at a distance, which I discovered in Little League when I was standing in left field wondering why everyone had turned to look at me. Turned out, there was a small, white ball headed my way and I didn’t realize that until it landed behind me.

After that embarrassing incident I did the logical thing and if you’re thinking, “he got glasses” clearly you don’t know me all that well. Nope, in the early 1960s glasses were for dorks so the logical thing was to quit baseball with its small, white ball and play football because the ball was brown and big and therefore visible.

If you’re short-sighted in more ways than one, problem solved.

I managed to get pretty much all the way through high school without admitting I couldn’t see the blackboard and continually coming up with excuses for walking right past people I knew because they were just a blur.

But then it came time to get a driver’s license and where we lived if you didn’t have a car you might as well join Tom Hanks on that island in Cast Away and ask that volleyball to go steady because it was 20 miles to anywhere. And cars meant girls and the Se Rancho Drive-In, which was the local make-out spot.

But I had a problem.

I needed glasses to pass the driving test, but believed if I ever wore those glasses girls would not want to go out with me, so I was on the horn rims of a dilemma. (Let’s all take a moment and appreciate that joke, shall we?)

Anyway…

At the eye doctor’s office I was asked to choose between black horn rim glasses and those glasses that have color on the top, but the bottom frames are clear plastic, either of which I believed would make me look like Fred MacMurray’s nerdy fourth son that they wouldn’t put on the show because I wasn’t cool enough. (Geez, if you’re too young, all these great My Three Sons references are going right past you, but to be honest, the jokes aren’t good enough to Google what was an amazing bland TV show that somehow lasted 12 seasons. Also, Fred MacMurray seemed like kind of a dick and his wife was supposedly dead which made me think Fred and Uncle Charley might have buried her in the backyard which would have been the most interesting thing that ever happened on that show.)

As you can see – unless you too need glasses – I was obsessed with being “cool” a serious medical condition that persists to this day.

So I’m standing at the display of truly awful eyewear fashion choices when I noticed you could get aviator-style, wire-rim prescription sunglasses so I asked couldn’t you just put clear glass in those frames?

The eye doctor office people looked at each other like they just saw the first forward pass in football – wait…is that legal? – and if someone else claims to be the guy who came up with wire-rim prescription glasses it better be before 1968 because I’d never heard of them before or I would have gotten glasses much sooner.

They might have been around somewhere, but I never saw anyone wearing them.

Turned out they could put prescription glass in aviator frames which looked cool, but also weighed about 12 pounds because the lenses were the size of dinner plates. But looking cool has always had a price and if the one I paid was having permanent dents in my nose and headaches from wearing glasses it took the Incredible Hulk to lift, so be it.

I’m still waiting for my wire-rim royalty check which I’m sure will be arriving any day now except I probably won’t realize it because as I’ve gotten older I can see distance better, but now can’t see jack shit up close.

It’s always something, isn’t it?

Which brings us up to 2021

So I’m reading one of those Large-Print, Ray Charles edition books from the library and damned if I’m not having trouble seeing the words which were big enough to cover 3/4s of the Goodyear blimp, so it finally dawns on me to close one eye and then the other to see what the hell was going on.

Turned out my left eye had abandoned ship and if I looked at a straight line there was a dip in it which seemed like the beginning of an LSD trip, but I’m only guessing because that’s about the only drug I didn’t try and that was mainly because Timothy Leary seemed so burned out he couldn’t spell C-A-T if you spotted him the ‘C’ and the ‘A.’

My optometrist took a look and said I should see an eye specialist.

I did and after three-and-a-half hours of tests which included numerous eye drops that made the world go pink and flashing lights that would have gotten Laurence Harvey ready to shoot a presidential candidate (completely dated Manchurian Candidate reference) I was told I might have a macular hole in the interior lining of my eye, but they couldn’t tell for sure because I had so many “floaters” which are small flecks of protein in the vitreous fluid inside your eyeball. (I’ve learned way more about eyes than I ever wanted to.) And when they took a picture of the inside of my eye it looked like the Milky Way Galaxy minus the Starship Enterprise.

So they’d have to operate to find out what the deal was and if it was something other than a macular hole they’d remove the vitreous fluid from my eye and replace it with Mountain Dew. (OK, made that up…it was actually some type of saline solution, but if I don’t get that wire-rim frame money, maybe I can land a Mountain Dew endorsement). But if it turned out to be a macular hole they’d remove the vitreous fluid and replace it with some type of gas, so if you ever thought I was an airhead, now you’re right.

So when I woke up from the operation I was told I had a small macular hole and they put a gas bubble in that eye to hold everything in place which apparently my body will slowly absorb and replace with Glenfiddich Scotch Whiskey if I drink enough of it during my recovery. (Made up that last part, but remember: I’m the guy who came up with wire-rim glasses so I’ve got a pretty good eye-innovation history.)

Meanwhile…

To keep the gas bubble in place while my body heals I’ve had to spend most of my waking hours face down on this thing, which looks like it belongs in some sex dungeon somewhere, but in reality isn’t nearly that much fun.

Plus, I’ve been told I can’t lift anything heavier than five pounds (a restriction I’ll try to keep going for the next year-and-a-half) so if I had an orgasm I’m pretty sure my left eye would explode.

See? They tried to tell us masturbation would make us go blind and turns out  they were right, so just do it until you need glasses and I’d suggest those wire-rim models because they look pretty snazzy.

So far I’ve watched every episode of Lilyhammer (basically The Sopranos go to Norway), the Rolling Thunder Revue Bob Dylan documentary and I’m working my way through the Spanish TV series, Money Heist.

If you got an unexpected text or email or phone call from me after months or years of silence don’t be surprised because I’ve had some time on my hands to catch up with people and what they’re up to which I’m kinda hoping keeps me from thinking about what I’m up to which is nothing, but I can now give you an incredibly detailed description of our dining room rug which, before now, I was only faintly aware existed.

Currently I can see out of my right eye just fine, but my left eye is just a blur and that means I have no depth perception so when I do get up to walk around I’ve been entertaining myself by walking into doors and poles and missing the table with my coffee cup and dropping my laptop twice.

(Just dropped a book on the bathroom floor because somebody seems to have moved the sink.)

This is the first thing I’ve written in a week because it turns out my screwed up depth perception also has my fingers hitting the wrong keys so I’ve gone from “hunt and peck” to “hunt and peck and re-peck.” Moses had an easier time carving those stone tablets than I’ve had finding the letter ‘Q’ on my computer.

The eye patch you see me wearing at the top of this thing only has to be worn at night so I don’t accidentally poke myself in the eye, but it gives me a kind of RoboCop/James Bond Villain look so I might keep wearing it after my eye gets better, but if I do that my brother Dan – who actually has to wear and eye patch and it’s not a fashion choice – has said I can’t come out to California anymore because two guys with eye patches hanging out together would look like some kind of fraternity prank.

Fair point.

Today is supposed to be my last day in the Marquis de Sade lounge chair and tomorrow I go to see the doctor and hope to get the okey-doke to stand up like a human being and continue walking into doors and poles and dropping my coffee cup because the table isn’t exactly where I thought it was.

And soon, I’ll get to drive a car so if I were you I’d stay off the road for the next week or so and if you need something to pass the time while you wait for me to figure out what lane I’m actually driving in, I can suggest Lilyhammer and a face-down chair which you can rent by the week and hasn’t been used for any nefarious purposes because my left eye couldn’t stand the strain.

Eventually, my eyesight will be better than before which means I’ll need a new pair of glasses and if that happens I’m going to ask the eyewear industry to comp me a pair of wire-rim frames because I think they owe me.

Until then, here’s looking at you…as you long as you stand to my right.