Day Eight without glasses

This is the end of Day Eight without glasses or, rather, without contact lenses. I've worn contacts since tenth grade, but I stopped wearing them last week to let my eyes get adjusted to "normal" in preparation for cataract surgery.

I'm wearing glasses made for my extreme myopia. They make everthing look small. Hold up a magnifying glass and look through it, and you'll see what I mean. Everything looks farther away than normal. My legs are longer, my feet are smaller. Crossing a street (on foot), I pay close attention to approaching cars. Women look about two sizes smaller, which is not a bad thing. I don't dare drive a car any time soon. In this traffic, I'd have a rear-ender before getting downtown.

Everything seems to be paying me special deference. The vertical lines of a door frame bow out as I walk through it. In a library, the ends of book shelves curve away from me as I approach. Looking down, curbs and steps seem to flatten out. None of this is good.

It is good that I'm a touch typist, but if I don't go back and correct my typos it would look like my spell checker went berserk and tried to convert my writing into a foreign language. I considered leaving my typos uncorrected here, just for laughs, but I'd look totally illiterate.

My optometrist said my brain would adjust to these glasses. I'm not sure I want it to. I should have the eye surgery in August and then I can send these glasses where I'll send my old contact lenses -- off to the land fill. There are organizations that collect old specs but I seriously doubt anybody could wear mine. On second thought, maybe I should donate them in case there's another poor soul out there with eyes as bad as mine.

Another good thing is that our county's bus system, as bad as it is, will let me get to and from my eye doctor's office in a reasonable time. This is remarkable because our bus system won't let me get to work in less than an hour and a half, for a trip that takes 25 to 30 minutes to drive. The bus system's routes make no sense. My kids will remember where the Bayside Bridge is. When constructed, it became the missing link in a major north-south artery. There is not one county bus that crosses that bridge. Not one. The bridge carries thousands of drivers daily, some of whom would rather ride a bus than pay four bucks a gallon for gas, but you can't get there from here.

How did I get onto that rant about the bus system? It distracts me from my current situation, stumbling around like Mr. Magoo. His problem was that he refused to wear his glasses. Mine is that they only "sort of" work. But this, too, shall pass.

One more good thing (hey, that's the third good thing here) is that I've rediscovered walking. The Safety Harbor Library is a 45-minute walk and I could probably do it faster. I've been there twice in a week. I plug my iPod into my ears and bop along, hoping for no rain.

That's all the good stuff I can stomach for this epistle. Tomorrow I'm going back to work for the first time in a week -- not that I really want to, but I don't want them to think they can get along fine without me.