Blind to the "L" Boxes

“Hello there! How are you?” inquired my optometrist.

“Good,” I replied and courtesy smiled.

“Anything new?”

“Meh, not really,” I automatically stated like a robot, then questioned it. When was the last time I saw him? Three years ago? I mean, something new had probably happened since then, but whatever.

We got down to business.

“Which looks a little better? One? Or two?” he asked.

“Uh…”

“One? Or two?”

“Two?” I answered. But it was just a guess. I stared through the optometrist’s equipment at the slightly blurred letters reflecting in the mirror on the wall in front of me. I tried hard to focus.

“Three? Or four? Three? Or four?” the Optometrist continued to question me. He continued asking as the numbers got higher and I tried to answer them. Sometimes it was obvious that some of the rows of letters were blurrier than others. But sometimes the comparisons were not strong enough to really see a difference, yet he still expected me to give an answer.

Finally I spurted out, “The only real difference is that one is wuuurrrp and the other isn’t. The blurriness isn’t different.” As I spoke I lifted my hands to express myself and show what I meant by “wuuurrrp”, and I accidentally whacked the eye doctor in the arm. “Sorry,” I said, and shifted nervously in my seat again.

“Yes, one is wonkier than the other. But which is blurrier?” he replied calmly. Too calmly. How was he always so calm? This was dang stressful. He had to be annoyed with me and my inability to give straight answers. Canadian border guards hated me for that. Medical doctors hated me for that. Everyone hated me for that…almost…at least I hope it’s only almost. I finally just chose a number even though they looked the same.

We moved on to the next tests. I squirmed nervously in my chair as I was expected to guess at the blurred letters in the bottom line. Sometimes I guessed letters with my intuition and got them right. Did that count? I tried to keep things strictly to vision as this was a vision test, but I was just so afraid of looking like an idiot by guessing the wrong letters. It felt out of control. He replied, “Yup, good.” Which confused me because I was pretty sure I was wrong. I had read out two D’s in the bottom line. It wasn’t likely there were two D’s. That made me nervous. Was this false encouragement? How did they judge “good”?

“So what are you doing with yourself these days?” he continued. Oh that accursed question. Why?! He continued, “Are you in school? Working?...”

“Um, well, I’m not really doing anything right now. I mean, I quit school a couple years ago, and have been working off and on since then. I’m trying to figure out what to do.” It seemed like the best way to put it without sounding totally lame, but it still sounded totally lame.

“Oh. You’re up in Canada right?”

“Ya…”

“Cool. Cool. You like it there? Enjoying your working? Or not working?...”

“Ya, I do lots of hiking. It’s beautiful up there,” I stuttered.

“Ah. I used to do lots of hiking until I got a job…”

Ouch.

“And before I hurt my Achilles tendon…”

I looked down at the cast on his foot. He told me he’d hopefully be hiking by the end of the summer. As the assistant came in to cruelly numb and dilate my pupils, the optometrist got on his little “knee scooter” (for lack of a proper name) and rolled his way out of the room calling, “I’ll see you again shortly.”

After the assistant had done her horrid duty, she told me to wait for about five minutes, and she left the room. I internally groaned. The appointment had already been long enough. Five minutes seemed like forever with nothing to do. I sat there alone attempting to keep my numb eyes open and failing as I picked gooey yellow eye-boogers out of the corners of my eyes. What had she put in my eyes?!

When the optometrist returned, he started asking me questions about my family.

“So you’re the baby of the family, right?”

“No, second oldest,” I courtesy chuckled.

“Oh, of three?”

“Four.”

“Your little sister’s name is Rachel, right?”

He was wrong. I corrected him.

“Oh, well she’s all graduated from high school now isn’t she?”

“Actually, no, she’s only twelve years old,” I smiled. The assistant gave a smirk in our direction.

The optometrist chuckled at himself and said, “Sorry, I have a lot of patients. I’m getting your family all confused.”

“So your older brother…?”

“He’s working towards his doctorate…”

“On the East coast, right?” He’d gotten that one right at least.

“Yep.”

“And your other brother?”

“He’s getting his, uh, what’s it called?...Oh! Construction Management.” I cringed. After I had just been talking about my bum-ish unemployment.

“Oh okay.” He commenced to shine a light about the brightness of the sun into my eyeballs. “Look to the left. Down. Right. Left-down. Right-down. Up…” At that point, I couldn’t keep my numbed, dilated eyeballs open any longer, and I gave a short laugh as I tried to follow his instructions. He used his fingers to prop my lids open. Thanks?

“You feeling a little funny?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Duh, I thought.

Finally, we finished and the assistant put a pair of those frame-less, plastic, disposable sunglasses on my face. As I was eating a York Peppermint Pattie from the front desk bowl and wondering if only weird people took the front desk chocolate, I saw someone who I thought I recognized from my old high school walk around the corner. Shoot! I used the blank check my mom had given me earlier to pay, stuffed my wallet in my fanny pack, and walked out the door with a gangster strut, carrying my load of contacts demos into the blaring sun and summer heat. I was so cool. But hey with those “glasses” I’m sure the former peer didn’t recognize me. Not that she would have remembered me anyway. I didn’t know her. I gave a sigh of relief…

…And I lived to tell the tale. In retrospect, I’ve been thinking a lot about how nervous I was the entire time. Nervous about looking stupid, immature, a moocher, or whatever other judgments people might make about me. I was on edge, just wanting to get out of there, and the optometrist was the nicest guy ever. I’ve been thinking back to the different lenses he made me look through, and then made me choose between options, and give him an answer even when I didn’t have one to give within the realm of what he wanted to hear. I’m sure it was just part of his job, but it seemed very symbolic of the way we deal with a lot of things in life.

We’re trained in our culture to view things through a certain lens, then make decisions through that lens. Labeled and put in boxes that aren’t really the true answer to the question, “Who am I? Who are you? What should we do?” Kinda like when I was answering ethnic questions about myself on a form online. It only let me choose one ethnicity. I could have chosen “Hispanic” or “White (non-Hispanic)” or whatever other options there were. Being of mixed ethnicities, I felt forced to lie in my response. There weren’t enough options for those outside the strict options provided. No room for exceptions. It was either/or. Black or white. No room for an equal sign. 

I’ve also found the same kind of thinking to occur when people debate about things like gay marriage. I feel told that I either I have to be marching down the streets with signs saying that I know for absolutely sure that being gay is a natural, healthy, and innate quality that deserves to be treated as something to be 100% celebrated without any proof, or instead be condemning gays to hell as a Bible thumper. Is there no in between? Is there no place for those who acknowledge that they may never have enough information to give a real, firm answer and so they just choose to let people live their lives?

It occurred to me that I’ve had lenses of ones and twos and threes and fours shoved onto my eyes. And I realized we all live our lives like that. I judge myself that way. Either I have a job, or I’m a moocher of a lazy bum who doesn't want to be responsible. Well, maybe my true self is not defined by either of those statements. Maybe I’m an oddball, a late bloomer, a sensitive person who is seeking the firm ground to continue on with my life. Maybe this is just where I am right now. It's like either I have a “success story” and give the right answer that the chosen lenses made me see, or the lenses show me that I see the wrong answer. I could live my life like that. I could see myself through the culture. I could let others’ expectations define me. Or I can think outside of it and see myself as I am. I can choose to wear the culture contacts, or I can choose to be blind to the boxes. The suffocating boxes. I think God was a little more creative than to use too many boxes when He created humans. And I think he supplied me with a bit of that creativity. I like the idea of wearing creative God contacts better. I'd rather be blind than wear culture contacts and see all the massive L's that were stamped on certain peoples' foreheads.