I'm lucky to be living in a time of eyeball technology. Without artificial assistance, my vision is such that I could not tell a flower stand from a bowl of miso soup at 15 paces.
Had I grown up in the '50s, my only option for living a normal life would have been glasses that made me look like one of those Chinese goldfish whose eyes are trying to escape from its skull. Consequently, my only career option would have been to become a scientist in a black-and-white horror movie in which I ended up being eaten by a stop-motion iguana.
As luck would have it, though, I was born on my birthday, which gives me more options. For most of my life I've worn high-index lenses, which avoid the goldfish effect but cost more than just hiring someone to look at things for me.
I've also worn contact lenses, but up until recently I could only wear hard contact lenses, which are essentially transparent hubcaps that you stick under your eyelids. They were pretty uncomfortable under the best of circumstances, but if I got the slightest bit of dust in one eye, it was as if that eyeball had lived an immoral, dissolute life, died and gone to hell, all while still somehow attached to my face and nerve endings. But at least I could buy cheap sunglasses to cover up my red, tear-filled eyes.
So I went back to glasses, but I haven't been happy with them for a couple of reasons. First off, apparently they only sell Weezer glasses or aviators now. So I can either look like someone trying to be ironically nerdy to cover up the fact that they are actually, in true life, a big nerd; or I can look like I'm headed to a bar to buy women tequila sunrises and call them "special lady."
Secondly, for some reason I've become hypersensitive to the cleanliness of my glasses. When I was but a young geek, I would happily play Nethack through three weeks of accumulated grime. Recently, though, I'd taken to carrying around little disposable wiping cloths in individual packets, and using them every 15 minutes. A single mote of pollen would alight on some corner of my lenses and I'd be right there with the cloth, scrubbing and burnishing, which just left a nice damp film for more grime to adhere to.
So, back to the optometrist I went to get what they're calling "toric lenses." These are soft lenses that are different from regular contact lenses in that ... um ... well, they're different. There's something in there that involves toruses and cylindrical lenses and suchforth, but the main thing is that they can't sit still. They're like a hyperkinetic child at a board meeting. You think they're all settled down then suddenly they're under the table playing with the chairman's sock garters. I'm not sure who the chairman represents in that metaphor, but I think it might be my tear ducts.
Speaking of tear ducts, that's the other difficulty I'm having with these lenses. I started using artificial tears – harvested from grieving robots – to make the lenses just a bit more comfortable, and now my real tear ducts appear to have foisted all their work onto the new guys. Even when I'm not wearing the contacts, my eyes feel as parched as a burning paper supply store in Arizona.
So what does that leave for me? Well, I understand that many highly trained individuals are prepared to shoot lasers into my eyes. Normally, I'm way into lasers. Whether in pointer or Zeppelin form, the laser is a real draw for me, but I just don't feel prepared to have lasers shot into my very eyes.
I'd be happy to undergo phaser eye surgery. Phasers probably have a setting for "improve vision" as well as "kill," "stun" and "fail to do anything useful for plot purposes." But lasers? I keep thinking maybe I'll go ahead and get it, and I go to the optometrist, and he's wearing glasses. So laser surgery is like ordering the cut the butcher won't eat. I'll stick with the traditional ugly, itchy and/or grime-encrusted forms off vision correction. For now.
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become nearsighted, shortsighted and excited.
