Thousand yard stare
About aged 22 I noticed something.
I was finding it difficult to see things in the distance. I couldn’t see the number of the bus approaching (in fact, I would be lucky to see the actual bus), I would walk past folk on the street that I knew, prompting much embarrassment, I was giving the eye to monsters that thought looked like Nick Cave, when in fact they looked like Captain Caveman.
I would regularly drive down to Glasgow to visit Uni friends and I knew that I had to do something about my eyesight when for the second time I missed the turn off to the Glasgow road after the Perth bridgey/flyovery thing and was on the road to Edinburgh instead. (By the way, have you ever tried to get back on the road to Glasgow after making that mistake. It’s a flipping nightmare! You have to cut across fields and go through rivers, and everything! No wonder the Romans couldn’t conquer us, they probably took a wrong turn.)
Not only that, I would be in a cold sweat everytime I went behind the wheel, because I couldn’t see what I was doing, especially at night. I was a myopic nervous wreck.
And so it passed that I had to get glasses. *Sigh*
For about 4 years I got away with only wearing them to watch telly, edit and drive. I hated being a glasses wearer, as I’m too vain.
I thought of Velma from Scooby Doo, I thought of Edna Everage, I thought of Nan Mouskouri everytime I put them on. I would never wear them out and about, even though I would be in a bad mood when I got home because I couldn’t see what was going on at concerts, at the bar, across the table from me. In fact I would like to apologise to everyone who thought I was blanking them. I wasn’t; I was just like Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman”, but without the scent.
One day whilst driving home from work, a white works van blocked the entrance into the right hand side street I was indicating to turn into. I wound my window down and said to the beast driving, “What’s the score? You’re blocking me.”
The Sun reading, pie eating, Irn-Bru swilling cretin turned to me and simply said, “Get tae fuck, you specky bitch!”
I nearly burst into tears. “Get tae fuck!” I can take. “Specky Bitch”, I couldn’t.
The time had come to get contact lenses, and these days I cannot do without them. I hate the fact that I cannot exist without the little expensive blighters. I hate the fact that I forgot to take them when I went to Finland and had to go four days with glasses before my package from home arrived with the lenses.
So I have been looking into the cut-your-eyeball-open-with-a-laser-surgery.
There’s only one thing stopping me: I am crapping myself.
