Is this better?

I am working my way through the annual eye examination. I have gone through a battery of tests on various machines: one tests for peripheral vision (it is excellent), one puffs air at my eye to measure for glaucoma (I don’t have it), and one tests to determine if I am developing macular degeneration. I have done particularly well on that test; in fact, the technician tells me the average score for a woman on the test is 33 and I have scored 77.

Now for the last examination.

The optometrist adjusts two sets of knobs on the device that I will look through so she can see what I can see, and she brings it up to my face.

"Please read the letters on the lowest line you can see," she says.

I am alarmed. I see squiggles that look like worms dancing at a disco.

I tell her so.

"Oh, I’m sorry," she says, "I had these set up for mumble mumble mumble."

She adjusts the knobs and returns the device to my face, and now everything is clear and sharp (yes, I can see clearly now). I can easily read the bottom line.

Then the fun begins.

"Which is better? This? (she flips something) "Or this?" (she flips something).

Well, one is obviously better than the other, and I tell her so.

"Good," she says.

And she does it again…. and again…. and again…

And before long I can’t tell the difference from one flip to the next. I ask her to repeat it. She does. I still can’t see much of a difference.

"Is this a trick question?" I ask her

She laughs, "No, not at all."

I make a choice.

We finish one eye and then do the same for the other eye.

Finally we are through.

She looks into each eye with a very bright light. "I see a cataract starting to form," she says, "but it’s not on the clock yet and we call this an incipient cataract, especially since it isn't bothering your vision."

That I am going to eventually have a cataract doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that when they measured my height, I learn have shrunk another 1/2 inch from last year. Doggone it!

She tells me there is a slight difference in the vision in my left eye compared with the examination last year, but not enough to require change to the lenses in the glasses I use for the computer and reading.

That eyes that can see clearly is important and a blessing… but then I think we need "seeing eyes" also…

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect.
Mark Twain, Joan of Arc