Self Portrait Tuesday

I was due on May 8th. I finally arrived on May 24th with the help of a pair of forceps. I'm sure my mother was very relieved and I am happy enough to share a birthday with Queen Victoria and Bob Dylan and be a Gemini not a Taurus.

Unfortunately whoever handled the forceps got a bit carried away and I ended up with a damaged optic nerve in my left eye.

As a small child I had to wear glasses with a patch over my good eye to try and convince the bad eye it really wanted to work. I remember my Mum used to draw an eye on the patch. I'm not sure if it helped me much (the patch or the picture).

I had glasses (but not the patch) until the age of around 11. I hated them. I believe there was only one sort of glasses available for children at that time - or maybe that's what my parents told me so they didn't have to buy glasses more expensive than necessary.

On a family holiday to Rotorua I "accidentally"* left them behind in our cabin and didn't notice until we were some way out of town making me quite quite unpopular with my parents.

I think at one stage I got so pissed off with them that I snapped them in half. I believe they were replaced by an identical pair. I can't remember exactly as I seem to have blanked out most glasses-related memories.

One I haven't blanked out is the eye examination where I was told I didn't have to wear them anymore. To this day I feel like I was encouraged to cheat wildly. The doctor had the eye chart up and I was whizzing through it with my right eye. Come time to test my left eye it all became rather more difficult. The doctor was encouraging. "Go on! I'm sure you can work out what it is!"

I was going "hmmm.... two pointy bits at the bottom...... Is that three at the top? It's probably a W then....?" And lo and behold I passed. And the glasses were finally history. There was much jubilation all round.

Oddly enough in later tests it has been discovered that although my left eye is utter crap, my combined sight is rather good, especially in close up which is jolly useful when making dolls house stuff and tiny needlework projects.

(*whether that was conscious or unconscious remains to be proven)