Only the Good Dilate

I can't see clearly now.

By Zach Hively

​My eyesight has always been superb.

I hyper-specifically remember testing at 40/20 or 20/10 or whatever really good vision is, back when I got my first driver’s license. The DMV employee’s reaction of awe made me internalize that I was a mofo-ing superhero. I could read street signs an entire second before anyone else in the car, back when people still read street signs.

​Now our phone maps tell us where to turn. But excellent vision has other uses! Like reading a grocery list without having to search for the glasses hiding out atop my own head.

I can’t leave well enough alone, though. Oh no. I take great delight, at the very occasional party I’m still invited to, in steering conversation around to my impeccable eyesight. It’s my primary remarkable physical trait. Statistically speaking, I am the only person my age who didn’t ruin his eyes by reading in the dark. (Told you so, Mom!) I even make my living, such as it is, on computer screens. I have no reason to expect functioning eyeballs.

Especially once they stopped functioning.

You see, I got a stye back around the start of the year. Not one of those little yellow ones that you can pop with plausible deniability. No—this was one of those mighty and inaccessible ones that made a friend ask me if I’d been stung by a scorpion.

​“On my FACE?”

“I mean…” She gestured at all of me, as if suggesting I am precisely the sort of self-explanatory man who might lie—accidentally, I’m sure—with scorpions.

Whatever the cause, my vision was getting wonky, and I concluded my eye was probably infected. I got a primary care doctor and her power of prescription to agree with me—“Yup that’s infected, alright.” The eyedrops took the grotesque factor down a considerable degree.

But the fuzziness remained.

Sometimes I couldn’t focus on mountains. Other times on my dogs. Those unethically bright headlights irritated me even more than normal. I worried, increasingly, about not spotting the difference between, there, their, and they’re. Whatever professional credibility I had left was on the line. At least, I presume it was. Lines were increasingly hard to make out.

So I did what no man wants to do: I made damn sure I knew the difference between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist. One gives out glasses, which I didn’t want. The other is harder to spell, especially without sharp vision. I called that one.

This was two months into my squinting-at-menus adventure. The office set my appointment another two months out. I had ample time to come to grips with my mortality.

I even convinced myself that losing my vision—a core component of my self-worth—was beneficial for my brand. If you can’t trust a skinny chef, what about a writer without specs?

The day arrived, as days tend to do. A series of professional technicians in scrubs led me through the trials. I had, I figured, about a 1-in-10 chance of guessing the smaller letters right. I could eliminate all the easy-to-differentiate ones. The strategy seemed to go well until I started doubling up guesses. “B or E, P or … F? That probably tells you all you need to know, huh.”

​The professional smiled a lipless smile and did not tell me if I had passed the trial.

For the final tribulations, I sat in a classic ophthalmologist’s chair with all the imposing accoutrements. The Big Boss Scrubs put some drops in my eyes.

She told me I would soon be unable to read my phone or anything else, but that I would be safe to drive. This struck me as backwards. I had to prove I could see before they let me drive in the first place. But I let it slide. She soon left me unattended, and I took pictures of a great many things because I am nosy.

And when I looked at my photos, I didn’t. By which I mean, I very much actually could not see my phone.

The phone on which I receive Very Important Writerly Emails. The phone on which, if I were ever awarded some lucrative contract for once, I would read about it. Worse, the phone on which I had typed out that afternoon’s grocery list.

If this is the last thing I ever read, it is going to haunt the proofreading part of my brain for all eternity.

The doctor came in—or so I was told. He intoned with far too much lighthearted joy that my vision, not fifteen minutes earlier, was 20/20—a clear downgrade from whatever it was before!—and that I was merely experiencing a disease (those were his words, “merely experiencing a disease”) that, to retread an old joke, sounds like a random line on a vision chart.

​“Say that again, please?” I begged, my hands grasping for his outline.

“Blepharitis.” Spelled B unless that’s an E; L, unless that’s an I…

No matter how ominous it sounds, this is just med-school speak for “slightly puffy eyelids.” They’re gently nudging my eyeballs. Take some supplements, keep washing your face, you’ll be fine, dude.

The Big Boss Scrubs handed me a cheap rolled-up set of sunglasses and ushered me on my way. My vision got fuzzier and fuzzier. I made it to the grocery store, recognizing that this might be the last place I ever saw. If “saw” is the right word—I couldn’t even see to punch in my telephone number at the checkout. For all I knew, my total was eight thousand dollars. For all I knew, my bananas were plantains.

I pleaded with a higher power: Please, return my sight to me, and I promise I will stop boasting about my superior vision. I will use it only for good! I will enjoy mountains again—and books, beautiful paper books. I’ll even turn the light on to read at night. I promise.

But I’ll never stop complaining about those blasted headlights.