I've been going to writing workshops at VONA for the past week and we've done some cool exercises in class. The other day we were asked to write stories that were, in essence, a tour of our body. I started with my eyes and came up with this story to share:
I have worn glasses since the age of four. It all started in preschool one afternoon when I reached across the table to steal a piece of melon off of my neighbor’s plate. I ended up knocking over my cup of milk. As it lay prostrate on the table and I scrambled to pick it up, Anita, my preschool teacher, caught my hand. She turned me towards her and stared into my face.
“You didn’t even see it, did you?”
“I did! I did!” I cried. I liked milk probably as much as melon. To watch it pool in a thick, opaque puddle was breaking my heart.
“And you color with your face so close to the paper,” she mused, releasing my hand.
“I like those markers’ smells,” I said. I snatched up the cup, letting the last drops of milk fall into my open mouth.
“I think you need glasses,” she concluded.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” I huffed and stuffed the contraband melon into my mouth.
As it turned out, I was near-sided with astigmatisms in both of my eyes. My parents nodded nonchalantly when Dr. Arao shared this information; my eyes were just like theirs. I picked out one pair of pink metal frames and one in blue, figuring they would match anything I would ever own. From then on, glasses became a permanent part of my face. It wasn’t such a terrible change, there were plenty of people who didn’t have perfect eyesight. However, the idea that my body had somehow failed me at such a young age, even in this minor way, was not lost on me.
It wasn’t until high school that my imperfect vision became a good time. One night I found myself stoned and sitting on top of the whale at the Lawrence Hall of Science. When I took off my glasses and looked out across the bay, it became a sea of multi-colored, bobbing orbs that pulsed and glided, their starry halos orbiting and overlapping.
“You see that?” I asked my best friend.
“Don’t you just love the view?” she asked.
I didn’t tell her that’s not what I meant. That this was my own private light show, one she could never see. It seemed rude to point out her visual shortcomings at this time.
A few months ago I met the girl of my most recent dreams. We had made a habit of sitting in my backyard drinking beer and listening to music late into the night. Once it was dark out, I liked to plug in the colored Christmas lights.
“You ever do this?” she asked me one time, taking off her glasses and nodding towards the string of lights. “It’s like a magic show.”
“I do.” I nearly gasped. “Doesn’t it make you feel like you have a special power?”
“Yeah. Because it is,” she said. “We can see things other people can’t.”
I took off my glasses and together we watched the celestial, blinking dance of the rainbow orbs. Electro glo-fi beats pulsed through the air and I felt like I had somehow come home.
