farsighted

About ten years ago I went to renew my driver's license. At the time I was living in North Carolina and the DMV I was directed to, was a strange building where the reception area was actually quite small, and you walked up to a desk much like going to a teller in a bank. Yeah it was exactly like that, a bank, except they weren't behind bulletproof glass. You went up to the desk and did your business, whatever that was, I can't remember exactly, and then you went into a line. A cattle chute of some type for drivers and what not. Quite a bit different than the take a number and sit method in Los Angeles.

What I really found interesting is what took place after the line. About 2/3rds of the area inside the building (this building had no rooms, it was one huge room) were wood desks, evenly spaced and all facing the same direction. Perhaps I am part of a generation that can still manage to recall, if only from photographs, the fifties and maybe sixties of the 20th century where large business would have armies of people at desks, toiling day in and day doing... I have no idea what. Not only this throwback to another time occupied the space, but manning these desks were none other than actual highway patrol officers. *That* seemed rather peculiar to me.

So you get called from the line and head to the appropriate lawman behind his desk, where he was outfitted in a full patrol uniform with all his gear. And again, unlike Los Angeles where you are handed a test or booklet or paperwork or whatever and return to your chair to attend to these papers, in this particular DMV you sat at the desk in front of the patrolman while taking the test, as if performing some sort of interview. Which I guess it is in some perspective.

You finish your papers under the eagle eye of the law's handyman and hand it back. If everything is in order you take the road sign/eye test. This is a peculiar one I hadn't seen before. I've seen the machines but not used exactly like this. If I am correct (and it has been awhile since I've been in a DMV) in LA you look into the eye machine just for an eye test. In NC the machine was used first to test your knowledge of roadsigns and their meanings. Once that task was overcome, finally came the eye test.

Straight away I'll tell you I tested at 20/14. And ever since that day I've bragged about how great my vision is. And truly it was pretty good. I had always been able to make out details just a little further than most people I knew. In high school I had read the line below the 20/20 mark in the dark. Again, I was rather proud of myself. (That wasn't an actual test, we were all just waiting to get our blood pressure taken. Not sure why...)

There is another thing. Some of you may have this also, I know many people who do. I am under the impression it is not uncommon. I have what I've been told are floaters. If you've ever looked into a clear blue sky and saw faint blurry black spots floating around, well, those are floaters. I've had them as long as I can remember, and usually I can't see them due to the staggering amount of visual information coming in, but if I'm looking at the sky as mentioned or a blank wall for instance, they are always present.

I asked an eye doctor friend of mine what they are. I hadn't expected his response. Retinal detachment is what he told me it was. Obviously, that sounded rather alarming. He lives in another city some 6 hours as the car drives, so he recommended I go see an eye doctor. To spare all the details, I hadn't been to an eye doc in about 800 years, so a friend sent me to hers and he was very good and friendly. So now I have an excellent eye doctor.

What he told me is the retinal detachment is about normal for someone my age and not to worry. But what he said next I wasn't ready for.

He told me I'm farsighted.

Now hold up a minute. I have great vision. If 20/40 is bad, and 20/20 is good, then 20/14 is better right? I guess a decade after 20/14 I am becoming a bit farsighted. I never in 800 billion years thought that when the second number got smaller that things got worse in the opposite direction. I guess you shouldn't assume so much in your life...

Now that I am aware of this I have some mild corrective glasses, basically reading glasses, to bring things just a bit closer to my eye. And what I've noticed since, is, my eyes don't hurt. Like any mild chronic pain you have for any length of time in your life, you adjust and don't really notice it. I hadn't realized that my eyes were straining and I had this dull ache behind my eyes from straining to focus up close. You see, I work in a field that requires me to focus, for 8 to 10 hours a day, about 2 feet in front of me, looking at a flat surface. And even when I look up, the farthest distance I get to look to is only about 30 feet away.

I never thought I'd have glasses.

In other news, I have about 14 unborn blogs sitting around. Many of them will most likely never come to completion. But the one I just wrote yesterday is the longest blog yet and it's some kind of personal inventory of the current affairs in my life. Very diary like. Like I said, personal. And it's just sitting there. Out of the 14 it's the only one that is fully finished and ready to post, and even though I want to share the fruits of my labour, it's sitting right on the fence of just how much and how detailed of the stuff that is my life I want to share.

I don't know what to do with it. I'll probably just post it. You'll laugh because I'm probably just in my head about it. I think it's the shear amount of information in it. Where this blog deals with one or two topics, that blog moves from one to the next to the next to the next.

And it's a little deeper than eye exams.