Why I’m taking a short-sighted approach to life

I’ve dallied with sharp vision but believe me, blurry is best

A big round thing and some other things. Image: Stocksnap on Pixabay

I once mistook a red tractor for a flowering shrub. “Look! A rhododendron in the middle of all that corn!” I shrieked happily to my friends. “Nature is so amazing!”

Their understandable response was to suggest I had my eyes tested.

I did.

Seeing clearly was helpful. But it also made life less blurrily beautiful. Freed of its task of turning indistinct trashcans, stones and shopping carts into fairies, magical objects and random flowers, my brain could deliver life as it really was, with all its sharp angles and hard edges.

I hated my glasses with a vengeance. I still do. In my opinion they are only attractive on supermodels or librarians in movies, who suddenly take off their specs, release their mane of unexpectedly wild curls and gaze seductively (if short-sightedly) at some entranced physics professor returning a book.

Also, while I am on the subject of fantasy versus real life: on makeover shows why do the ‘made-over’ people never wear their glasses?

“You can look now!” says the host. The drab bespectacled “before” turns to confront her dazzling glasses-free “after” in the mirror. Her eyes fill with tears…