See It, See It Everywhere

You know how you’ll hear a new word, or hear a song, or see some billboard for the first time, and then suddenly it’s popping up everywhere?

That’s a cognitive malfunction. That item, whatever it was, was always there: you just never took direct notice of it before. But now that you have, the malfunction corrects itself and you have a newly consistent addition to your everyday conscious experience.

Part of what makes life fun is that we’re all chock full of these things: software bugs, brain flaws, perceptive tricks, optical illusions. Nothing’s ever exactly what meets the eye, because most of the time our own biology lies to us.

Yesterday, Kristi and I took a trip to the optometrist. My wife has this strange insistence that I address my health care directly and preemptively; she fails to fully appreciate that I’ve never had a broken bone or serious illness, never needed surgery or significant corrective medical treatment – in short, that the universe has graciously blessed me with immortality along with a winning personality. But alas, not one to put too much stock into her husband’s autoapotheosis, Kristi insists that it is best for me to consult with qualified medical professionals from time to time.. if for no other reason, just to make sure we get full street value for the big health insurance checks we’re writing every month. And thus we went and I sat down and read off the eye charts and did the “OH MY GOD THE SUN’S REALLY BRIGHT” eyedrops and all that fun stuff.

And lo, we learned that I needed glasses.

What. The. Hell.

Okay, so I knew that I was nearsighted. I’ve actually kind of known that for ten years, since realizing one day in my old IT shop days that the world’s battery of street signs had all acquired an odd blur to them at distance. But yesterday I also learned that I had color stigmatisms in both eyes, certainly new information to me.

But the big surprise? The discovery that my left eye is a bit off kilter, making me just very, very slightly crosseyed. Probably been that way since birth or at least early childhood, and just never discovered or diagnosed. “Do you find that you have trouble using binoculars?”, the doctor asked. Well, yeah. It takes me a couple minutes usually to focus my eyes right, and even then I can’t use them long before I get a headache. Always just thought that was normal, that everyone had that. “Nope, ” he replied. “Just you.”

I guess that would also explain why Avatar gave me a splitting headache, after three hours of staring down a pair of 3D glasses. My eyes don’t naturally line up perfectly and have to work a bit harder than average to add up a stereoscopic view.

So anyhow, we figured out my new prescription and picked out frames, and I’ll have my new glasses in about a week.

Now here’s the bizarre part. Now that I know the issue is there, I can feel the steady eye strain. It’s slight, but it’s there – something I never noticed before, like a tiny headache living in the muscles just behind my eyes, a light dull pain both constant and pressing. And now that it’s been pointed out to me, I see the slight stereoscopic off-focus. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that I’ve been living with this probably for decades but just without taking any real notice, because hey, it’s just how things are. You live with it until it’s not even there anymore, and then it’s pointed out to you and – BOOM – it’s just there.

They say ignorance is bliss. Well, in my case, it’s also slightly screwed up vision that won’t get better with age. Given the choice, I think I prefer just eating the fruit of knowledge, sacrificing my immortality for precision-crafted glass that allows me to see properly.

I’m guessing that clear vision will probably make it easier to notice interesting things more often, which I suppose will have to be my compensation for a suddenly limited lifespan. Not to mention my somewhat disappointing lack of superpowers, as well as my inability to travel in time and to make endless and effortless riches online. But I suppose you take what you can get.

Damn you modern medical science.