One of my friends has 20/10 vision. Last year, the US Navy recorded my eyesight at 20/400.
My eyes commenced their eventual decline into blindness when I was twelve. At thirteen, one of my teachers assembled a desk for me and stationed it four feet away from the blackboard. The desk was a cardboard box. I sat on the classroom floor. By nineteen, my friends rarely allowed me to drive my own car. My vision equates that of an inebriated mole. Anyone with superior optics than me is a driving legend. It's not hard to accomplish.
Upon my arrival in New Zealand as a laborer for a family with five children, the mom divulged that if I stayed a year, they would pay for LASIK eye surgery. The dad is one of the leading opthamologists in the country. They would give me the gift of sight. So, I stayed. I endured through vomit in my hair and clothes. I persisted after holding child excrement in my hands. I continued through screaming fights, punches, and kicks. I've been scratched and bitten. I wanted free corrective eye surgery.
Three years ago, an initial LASIK consult in California revealed that I wasn't a candidate. My corneas are too thin. The mom assured me that New Zealand has the leading LASIK technology in the world. The Eye Institute would fix my eyes.
I went to the consultation as hopeful as the time I returned home to find a new car in the driveway. With a bow. I was sixteen and my dad had called me back. My brother was filming. I shrieked the cry of a girl in ecstasy for five minutes. And then my dad told me it was a rental car while his car was at the mechanics.
During one of the many eye tests, I looked into a machine. Everything was black, except for a red laser light that attacked my eyes with mad-dog persistence. My eyes watered. Without stopping. For five minutes. The optometrist couldn't obtain a clear read. However, twenty minutes later, he announced that the combination of my corneas and eyesight rendered operation impossible. My corneas are too thin, and my eyesight too bad. He wouldn't operate on me for three million dollars. I'd probably be blind after the surgery.
I sighed and drove to the preschool to pick up the three-year-old.
When he saw me, he fired his arms around my neck and asked, "Are your eyes still broken?"
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