My Two Dimensional World

I was born with an inherited eye condition known as strabismus. It is characterized in the following manner: “The eyes do not properly align with each other when looking at an object. The eye that is focused on an object can alternate...If present during a large part of childhood, it may result in amblyopia, or lazy eyes, and loss of depth perception. If onset is during adulthood, it is more likely to result in double vision.” 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabismus

I won the strabismus trifecta: lazy eyes, a flat two-dimensional world, and permanent double vision, the technical term for which is “diplopia.”

Although it’s not something I usually lead with, when I tell people that I see double they express shock and disbelief. “You mean you see two of me? Right now?” Yes, I do. “What does that look like?” Sometimes objects are superimposed one upon the other. Other times they appear side by side in close proximity, but there are always two. Like in that chewing gum commercial from back in the day, “Double your pleasure, double your fun, with Double Mint gum.”

Truth is, it isn’t double the pleasure. At 6, it made learning to read difficult. I saw two lines of text. My eyes kept switching from one line to the other as the page jumped around. It was like trying to read a book while riding on a bus as it bounces over a rough road. It was no picnic. It made me nauseous. Still, I grew to love reading despite the way the text danced about. I have my maternal grandmother to thank for that.

Fixing my eyes became a major theme throughout my childhood. I was in glasses at 18 months, and wore a patch over one eye for a number years. Later, at the “eye clinic,” I labored in vain to place the ball in the left view finder in the center of the table in the right view finder. This required using both eyes simultaneously. Impossible for me. It became obvious after years of trying that more drastic measures would be necessary.

“Ya cross-eyed bastard,” was an epithet once hurled at me as a kid by an angry adult! Yes, it was true, I was “cross-eyed.” Did I forget to mention that? As a result I was inordinately shy. I seldom looked directly at anyone, and never “in the eye.” Strangers sometimes did a double-take or paused to stare at the cross-eyed kid. My cheeks burned with embarrassment and shame. Three surgeries later, at the age of 8, the alignment was cosmetically corrected. At least I didn’t look like a “cross-eyed bastard” any longer. Technically, I wasn’t a bastard for that matter.

About the surgeries. Surgery number one: the doctor didn’t get it right. Then came the re-do. He offered to “fix” things and try again, this time, no charge. Surgery two made things worse. My aunt was a nurse, and she assisted him in the operating room during that surgery. Afterwards, she told my mother that she could smell alcohol on the surgeon’s breath. Just my luck! My doc was a drunk, and he was going at my eyes with a scalpel and sutures!

We discovered the result a short time afterward. I remember looking out the window one afternoon as my grandmother pulled her enormous black Oldsmobile into our driveway. I called out to my mom, “Look! Nana has TWO cars!” Uh-oh. Surgery number three was at the hands of a new doctor. The third time was the charm.

Meanwhile I was living under the dark cloud of Catholicism. Each time a surgery didn’t take, I assumed that it was my fault. Steeped in the awful guilt that is the birthright of every Roman Catholic, I believed that I was being punished for not being a “good boy,” or just not being “good enough.” I didn’t know what it was that I had done to provoke Him, but I was certain that God didn’t think I “deserved” normal looking eyes. When the last surgery was successful I was surprised, confused, grateful.

Baseball, whether organized Little League, or sandlot pickup games, presented a new set of problems since it requires one to judge how far the ball may be from his glove or the end of a Louisville Slugger. I was often the last kid picked when we chose sides because it was unlikely that I was going to get a hit and very likely that I would miss the easy pop-up flies. Forget ground balls. I liked the game, and found ways to manage, and it was important to me to prove to myself that I could play. I even hit a bona fide Little League home run once. By the time my career ended I’d spent most of it at catcher, where the balls came straight at me. Suited me just fine.

In my teens, in driving school, the instructor had us complete an activity designed to measure the accuracy of our depth perception. This was intended to help us with things like parallel parking, backing up, and gauging the distance between our cars and the cars ahead of us at a stop light. When I completed the test, I was rated at 500% error. You read that right! I think that set a record for the Winchester Driving School in Springfield, Massachusetts during the summer of 1966. Actually, I found it pretty funny, at least initially.

Funny, until I drove the family car into the front of our garage door, doing minor damage, but alerting me to the potential dangers of my disability. That same year I struck the front of Blanche’s Variety Store in West Springfield as I pulled in to park. It was a small, low building with a white stucco wall supporting two large windows. Boom! Although there was no damage to the storefront, it rocked the little building and scared the hell out of Blanche. She came running out asking, “What happened? Are you okay?” Clearly she was shaken up. I guess no one had ever driven into the front of her store previously.

As time went on, I learned strategies to help me cope with my diplopia. Occasionally, I would miss my glass while pouring myself some milk, or miss something like a pencil or set if keys when someone went to hand them to me. In time, my brain found was to compensate and l moved on.

About 5 years ago while at my ophthalmologist’s office, I learned that there were special glasses with prismatic lenses for adults with diplopia. I made an appointment with the doc who specialized in this sort of thing. After an initial exam and several different lenses my two-for-one world collapsed into a singularity and the “world was made new.”

It shocked and stunned me. Tears filled my eyes, as I was overcome with confusing emotions. The doctor asked, “Are you okay?” I was not. I asked her about the glasses and learned that while I wore them I would see the world the way everyone sees it, but as soon as I removed the glasses it was back to doubles.

I told the doctor that having lived my life seeing two of everything, I couldn’t handle such a monumental change.

So, if ever we meet, remember that I am doubly blessed with seeing two of you.