When I was young, I knew I had pretty bad eyesight, but I did everything I could to get out of wearing glasses. Given that my last name starts with an A, I got lucky and was typically sitting in the front of the class, a fact that helped me cover up. I also got very good at reading the shapes of words, rather than letters themselves, a fact that still gets me into trouble now and then, especially with unusual names (example: it took me 10 years of reading the Oz books to realize the Gnome King's name was Ruggedo, not Rodrigo!). However, eventually I got caught- a teacher decided to sit the class by first names, not last, and my grades were terrible in that class until an optometrist caught me with one of those eye charts with lines instead of letters. I could tell that they were horizontal or vertical, but not where the single bar was, and failed horribly. (Also, by then, I had the letters chart memorized, but the lines one was new to me.)
Please continue to pardon my lack of drawing skills. Anyhow, on what may seem like an unrelated topic, my little sister (who also has bad eyesight) and I would constantly play outside when we were young by making things up about the world around us. We were very happy living in a world of fantasy, seeing gnomes and fairies hiding everywhere, and making up amazing stories about that fuzzy thing over there that could be an alien life form that descended on the earth when it's mission to find new forms of candy was struck by interstellar lightning and crash landed on earth! It teamed up with the family of rabbits living in that hole over there and has taken the animal kingdom by storm, but so far has had no success with carrot candy. We should go introduce ourselves and offer to help!
Sadly, upon moving closer, it was almost inevitably a tree trunk, or piece of rubbish, or leaves stuck in a small bush, but the point is that we lived in a very exciting world and made up bizarre stories on a pretty regular basis. (I credit this to the fact that our dad would make up bedtime stories rather than reading from a book. We loved this and tried to imitate it.) Interestingly, however, our older sister did not (to our knowledge) share our love of fantastical storytelling. In hindsight, this may have been due to the pressure of being the eldest, feelings of needing to be the best, to excel, etc., but hindsight was not available to us at the time. All we knew is us + bad eyesight = fantasy and stories. Older sister... plus... oh my gosh! She has perfect eyesight! That must be what it is! Older sister + 20/20 vision = realism and reality! Our minds were well and truly blown.
Now, whether or not this has any basis on reality (ha), or actual cause and effect, I still hold it to be true to this day. When I'm particularly fed up with reality, one of the first things I'll do is take my glasses off so I don't have to have all those mean, cold, harsh outlines and well-defined shapes staring at me. Also, as you can clearly tell, I still like to tell stories and live in.. well... if not fantastical than at least a more exciting version of this world than is probably good for me. Cheers!
Please continue to pardon my lack of drawing skills. Anyhow, on what may seem like an unrelated topic, my little sister (who also has bad eyesight) and I would constantly play outside when we were young by making things up about the world around us. We were very happy living in a world of fantasy, seeing gnomes and fairies hiding everywhere, and making up amazing stories about that fuzzy thing over there that could be an alien life form that descended on the earth when it's mission to find new forms of candy was struck by interstellar lightning and crash landed on earth! It teamed up with the family of rabbits living in that hole over there and has taken the animal kingdom by storm, but so far has had no success with carrot candy. We should go introduce ourselves and offer to help!
Sadly, upon moving closer, it was almost inevitably a tree trunk, or piece of rubbish, or leaves stuck in a small bush, but the point is that we lived in a very exciting world and made up bizarre stories on a pretty regular basis. (I credit this to the fact that our dad would make up bedtime stories rather than reading from a book. We loved this and tried to imitate it.) Interestingly, however, our older sister did not (to our knowledge) share our love of fantastical storytelling. In hindsight, this may have been due to the pressure of being the eldest, feelings of needing to be the best, to excel, etc., but hindsight was not available to us at the time. All we knew is us + bad eyesight = fantasy and stories. Older sister... plus... oh my gosh! She has perfect eyesight! That must be what it is! Older sister + 20/20 vision = realism and reality! Our minds were well and truly blown.
Now, whether or not this has any basis on reality (ha), or actual cause and effect, I still hold it to be true to this day. When I'm particularly fed up with reality, one of the first things I'll do is take my glasses off so I don't have to have all those mean, cold, harsh outlines and well-defined shapes staring at me. Also, as you can clearly tell, I still like to tell stories and live in.. well... if not fantastical than at least a more exciting version of this world than is probably good for me. Cheers!
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