It all started when I was born. Somehow, in the womb, while developing into the amazing and charismatic person that I was to become later in life, the outer muscle on my left eye was too long, and caused that eye to drift towards my nose. They called it Lazy Eye Syndrome. It drifted so far to the right, that the pupil was mostly hidden behind the corner of my eyelid, and as a baby, I never learned to use that eye much. There is a brief window during the development of a baby’s brain where he learns to look out of both eyes, and if he doesn’t see out of one of them, never learns to have binocular vision, which is crucial to having depth perspective. If that window passes, it becomes kind of a permanent condition. Along with that, I was very nearsighted.

When I was about 4 years old, my parents took me to the eye doc, and got me glasses, so that I could actually see things clearly. My earliest memories of going to the eye doctor, consisted of dreading the “is this… click click click… better than this?” machine. I could never figure out which was better, and grew to hate the machine. There was also this other binocular looking machine, where I was asked to look in it, and take a pencil, and connect numbers on both sides of a double column of numbers. “Ok, Sam, connect number one on the right, to number 16 on the left.” I would draw a line between the two numbers. After being asked 5 or 6 times to connect the numbers, the doctor would take the card out of the machine, and my lines never connected any of them. The lines just kind of shot off sideways and ended in some random place. It was embarrassing. That led to the eye doctor having me practice with a pencil, moving it left to right and back in front of my eyes, and moving my eyes to follow it. It was the 1950’s, and in those days they never clued in a kid as to why he was being asked to do anything, and was a mystery to me. It never seemed to make any difference.

When I got to school age, the students took great delight in making fun of my crooked eyes. They always asked me if I was cross eyed. I wasn’t actually cross eyed, which requires both eyes. I was only half cross eyed. My left eye was always looking to the right. Nonetheless, it was embarrassing too, and because kids can be so cruel to each other, I took a lot of heat about it. If you add into the situation that I was ADHD, I was a hot mess during elementary school and on up through high school.

I remember in 4th grade being in the lunch line behind Brenda York, (I will never forget her name)  one of my worst antagonists, and she turned to me, and said, “You are ugly because you are cross eyed.” To which I replied, “Oh yeah? Well your breath stinks.” Which made her cry, and got me sent right to the principal’s office. I got sent there regularly, mostly because of being hyperactive.

In high school, the doctors decided I had grown enough to operate on my left eye, and they popped it out of the socket, and sawed off the outer muscle, and sewed it back together, and popped it back into the socket. It made no difference that I could tell, at least to my vision, and though my left eye was less crooked, when I was tired, it still tended to drift towards my nose.

I remember how often I would be talking to somebody face to face, and they would look to their left a couple times, and finally ask me, “What are you looking at?” I was looking at them, but my left eye was looking off to my right. Because my brain had never developed binocular vision, I was right eye dominant, and only looked out of one eye at a time, never at the same time. Because of this, I had no depth perspective, and was always running into things, like wall corners and glass doors. I just could not tell how far away things were from me.

I played Little League baseball, and earned the position of Bench Warmer and occasionally right fielder, since nobody ever hits a ball into right field. I missed a lot of pop up fly balls, or caught them with my forehead, because I could never tell how far away they were.

When my dad taught me to drive, he was a nervous wreck. Not having depth perspective, I would often drive right up to a stop sign, and realizing I was closer than I thought, I would slam on the brakes. Or I would stop, and my dad would ask me why I had stopped so far away from the stop sign. He left permanent grip marks on the arm rest and permanent foot marks in the floor from trying to hit the brakes. It must have been an awful experience for him. I eventually learned to look at the stop sign, trace it back along the ground to me, and sort of figure out when to start applying the brakes. Those were the times that taught me the SWAG method, the system that I still use today, 55 years later. Scientific Wild Ass Guess. It never lets me down, and works better than math. 

By the time I was in college, I had gotten a lot better at guessing distances, and accommodated to a life without depth perspective. I still occasionally walked into things, and had to slam on my brakes while driving, but as time passed, I did it less.

My nearsighted vision never changed, and I always had really thick glasses. Because of my hyperactiveness, and inability to filter what I said, during school I got into a lot of fights with other guys. They knew that if they could knock my glasses off, I was an easy target because I could not see them clearly. I lost almost all of the fights. And after being knocked to the ground and losing the fight, I would have to feel around on the ground to find my glasses because I could not see them, while the boys would laugh at me. There were always other boys standing around to watch me lose the fight. That embarrassment helped me learn that fighting was not a solution to anything, and at that point, I gave up fighting, and tried hard to keep my mouth shut so I would not put myself into the position of having to defend myself.

After college, my eye doc talked to me about getting contact lenses. I did, and it was so much better than having heavy glasses on my face. That was before soft contacts. I had hard lenses, and quickly became adept at popping them in and out. 

Fast forward to moving to Austin and getting side jobs on weekends to supplement my pay from my day job. There was a restaurant here, Capitol Oyster Bar, and I knew the owner. He approached me with a job of painting the restaurant inside. The walls were painted with oil based paint, and I would have to use the same kind of paint to do the job. Plus, I would have to do it at night when the place was closed. I could start when it closed for the night, at 8pm, but would have to have it done by the time they opened at 9am the next morning. I gave him a bid, and he accepted it, so I found two buddies to help me.

I got there on the night we agreed, with my two helpers and my airless paint sprayer, and a pile of 5 gallon buckets of gray oil based paint. The three of us got to work, and pushed the tables together in the middle, covered everything with plastic, and set the ladders up. I set up the sprayer, donned some goggles, and started spraying. Within 5 minutes, my goggles became covered with overspray, and I could not see out of them. I turned the spraygun over to one of my helpers, Greg, and tried to wash off the paint on my goggles with paint thinner. It wasn’t working very well, and before long, Greg too, had covered his goggles with paint. So much for goggles. Both Greg and I wore hard contacts, and we ditched the goggles, and got back to spraying. We found that we could paint for about half an hour before the paint covered our contacts. At that point, I passed the spray gun to Greg, and went into the bathroom, took my contacts out, washed them with paint thinner, then with the restaurant bathroom squirty hand soap, then rinsed them off with water, and popped them back in my eyes. By then Gregs contacts were paint covered, so we would switch, and he would clean his contacts while I took over spraying. We did that all night, and at 8:30 the next morning, were stripping off the plastic and moving the tables back into place. The place reeked of oil paint, but it looked good. One wall of the restaurant was all french doors, and we had them open to air out the smell. We packed up and loaded my truck, and headed home. 

After Jenny died, and I had been accepted to Peace Corps, they told me that the contact lenses would have to go, and I should bring two pairs of glasses when I went to Africa. The chance of having clean water to wash my contacts in was unlikely, so I would have to get used to glasses again. When I got back from Peace Corps, I never bothered to change back to contacts, and wore glasses until recently.

About 6 months ago, my eye doc started talking about my having cataracts. I should get cataract surgery, and they could implant lenses in my eyes, and do away with glasses altogether. It was kind of scary thinking about somebody cutting on my eyes, but by then, I was having a lot of trouble driving at night, and my vision was not very good with my glasses even during the day. I agreed, and set up the surgery.

The surgery center did my right eye first, with my left eye scheduled a couple days later. The surgery took about half an hour, and when I came out of it, and walked to where my neighbor Lora was waiting to take me home, it was like having an epiphany. I opened my right eye, and for the first time in my life, I could see clearly. I could see leaves on the trees, and details off into the distance. Colors were so much brighter. It was so amazing that I could not stop looking around at everything. I had never known what other people could see with their 20-20 vision. It was beautiful. After I got the left eye done a couple days later, I was amazed. I still did not have binocular vision, but everything was so clear and in focus. Best $4500 I ever spent.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I’m found…

Was blind but now I see. <3