meemalee

[This follows on from Specs ] Just before Christmas, my dad, the ophthalmologist, says to me, " I think it's time you had laser surgery ". I do a double-take (actually, it feels like a blood vessel explodes in my head), but I get over my shock quickly and I bounce to a phone to book a consultation. He's recommended a particular surgeon, and a fortnight later, I find myself waiting to speak to the man in question. A cheerful girl takes me to a room and she does a full eye test to check if my vision is stable. I don't have much of a bridge on my nose, so the clunky trial frames keep sliding down, and I end up having to prop them up with a finger. I hand her a list of all my prescriptions since time began, and she looks scared (" Oh god, a looney ") till I explain that my dad compiled them out of professional interest. She then scans me with a machine to measure the thickness of my corneas - the laser will be slicing into them, so the thic...

I get my first pair of specs at the age of 6. My father is an ophthalmologist, so I have my eyes tested for the hell of it, and he discovers that, not only am I astigmatic, but one of my eyes is mildly short-sighted and the other mildly long. This means they sort of cancel each other out, and I don't really need the glasses, not yet. Sometimes I lie on my bed and I hold the specs by their arms up above me, and I squint at the ceiling light through each lens in turn and I marvel at how the light appears fat and blurry in the right lens, and sharp and tiny in the left. But after a while, the long-sighted eye joins the other in its romp into myopia, and the astigmatism marches on. By the time I'm 10, I'm wearing specs full-time and in a way it seems appropriate as I am already the school spod. I let it pigeonhole me to some extent - I give up trying to be good at sports, although enforced activity means I regularly get a netball in my face anyway, and I retreat bookishly behin...