Eye Opening Experience

My father used to like to tell the story of when he went to see a doctor for a weird mole he had on his leg.

"Doctor," he explained. "I had this spot on my leg that I thought was a mole and then it fell off."

"Oh my God," the doctor explained. "That's terrible!"

"Why?" My father asked?

"Because now I won't be able to charge you anything to remove it."

My father told this story to poke fun at doctors in particular and the whole medical profession in general. Of course, he didn't reserve his disdain for doctors; he would criticize any profession for pretty much anything, as long as there was a decent joke to be had.

I mention this because I couldn't get his story out of my head the whole time I was at the eye doctor the other day. I haven't been to the eye doctor in a LOOONG time, and figured I'd better get things checked out. There wasn't anything in particular that was bothering me, just a general sense that I needed to be an adult and do what was necessary to keep myself healthy.

So, I went to the eye doctor, where first an assistant put me through some tests that I thought I did pretty well on. I didn't get every letter right on the bottom line, but I got most of them right. In fact, I did better than I thought I would.
But I didn't do well enough to avoid walking out of there with a prescription for reading glasses.

"I can't believe," the doctor said over and over again, "that you've lasted this long without glasses."

"Are you saying that because I'm over 40 and did so well on the eye test that you're amazed at how great my vision is, or are you saing it because I did so poorly?"

He avoided answering me and simply handed me my prescription.

"You can get this filled anywhere," he said. "But we DO have a fully equipped optician right here in the office."

Even without the maybe-necessary glasses, I could see where he was coming from.

I walked right past the optician on my way out of the building, which reminds me of another favorite story of my father's.

It seems that my father had a business associate who would never pay for new eyeglasses. Instead, when he felt like it was time for a new prescription, he would go to a restaurant or two and tell them that he'd lost a pair of glasses. Without fail, the restaurant would present him with a box full of lost glasses. He would them try them on until he found a pair that he liked. Problem solved.

Now, I didn't go that route. I went and about the best $10 pair of glasses I could find, to try them out. And I didn't like them. So I'm still not wearing glasses. But I have made progress: until recently, I probably wouldn't have admitted to even owning a pair of glasses.