It's All How You Look At It

Newport Beach, California: 1961:

During my sixth grade year at Horace Ensign Junior High, I went through a really awkward stage. I played kickball, softball, volleyball, and basketball, but with each sport, I could not hit the ball! I was so uncoordinated!

I also felt ugly. I had braces to straighten my teeth and had to wear a head gear each night. Thus, there was no ability to sleep with rollers in my hair. [This was before electric curlers or curling irons]. The result? My hair hung like a limp rag.

For class I sat at the right side of the room on the front row. Even though I was in the front, I could not read the blackboard. I thought the glare from the sun on the board prevented me from seeing what was written on it.

The school nurse called me into her office for her annual vision screening. She asked me to read the eye chart. The only thing I could find was the big "E," and IT was blurry. The nurse was so surprised. She asked why I wasn't wearing glasses. I didn't know I needed glasses!

I thought everyone saw the way I saw things. For instance, I didn't think people could recognize faces in a crowd. I couldn't, so I had adopted a system to recognize people. When I wanted to find my mother in a crowd, I'd look for the color she was wearing.

When I was told I needed glasses, I was devastated. Here I was already ugly, and now with glasses I would be even uglier. I went home and cried. My mom took me to the eye doctor and I ordered a pair of glasses tailored to my vision. The day after my glasses arrived, I went to school, sat at my desk, put my glasses on, and voila! I could read the chalkboard, even with the sun shining on it. It didn't help my image, though. I would not be the beauty queen. On the plus side, however, I could finally see all that I had been missing. Some things are more important.

It wasn't until years later when I was writing my "life story" that it dawned on me that the reason I was so uncoordinated at that time was because I could not SEE the ball to hit it! Wish I'd figured that out at the time. I would have felt somewhat better about myself.

As with needing glasses, sometimes we don't know when we're missing something in our life. Maybe it's something that will help us see our own lives more clearly. We can adapt to help us see better, but it may not do what a pair of glasses will do for us. Sometimes, even when it doesn't help our image, we need to stop and put on the glasses in order to see clearly.