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My wife and I recently celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary and we
did what all romantic couples do on such an auspicious occasion. We got
our eyes examined.
I hadn't been to the eye doctor since before we were dating. But, after
performing poorly on an eye test to renew my driver's license, my wife
encouraged me to consider glasses. She needed a new pair, too.
As a kid, the eye test was pretty basic: Cover one eye while reading a
chart on the wall. Now there was a long line of sophisticated machines
to put me through my paces. After having my peripheral and color vision
tested, I gazed into the eye pieces of the third machine.
"What do you see?" asked the doctor.
"I see a waste basket," I said.
"Is it full or empty?" she asked.
" Full," I said, feeling quite confident in my ability.
"That's good...but surprising," said the doctor. "Your wife told me you
can walk right past an overflowing waste basket without seeing it or
bothering to take it out to the trash."
‘What else did my wife tell you?" I asked.
"She said you have trouble seeing things her way," said the doctor.
It was clear my wife was looking for more than my vision to be corrected.
After I was through with the doctor, I met my wife where the eyeglass
frames were displayed. The doctor had dilated my eyes and I was having
trouble focusing.
"I'll need you to tell me which frames I look best in," I said to my wife. "Do these frames make me appear sophisticated?"
"Have your eyebrows always been different sizes?" she countered.
I took that as a "no," and proceeded to try on dozens of frames during the next ten minutes.
"Your eyes are still blurry from the dilation, aren't they?" my wife asked.
"Yes, how did you know?" I asked.
"Because those aren't eyeglass frames" she said. "You just picked up a pair of pencils and put them behind your ears."
"That would explain why they felt so wooden," I said.
After I found the perfect pair of frames, that I was convinced made me
look like Robert Redford, it was my wife's turn. Her face is small and
most adult frames are too large for her. So, she tried the section with
children's eye glasses.
My wife would have been the talk of the town in the glow-in-the-dark
Sponge Bob Squarepants frames. But, she finally settled on a simple
pair of gray frames. Without lenses in them, she couldn't read the
small red print on the side of the frames. Who would have guessed
Nintendo even made eye wear?
After waiting an hour for our glasses to be made, I tried mine on. The
world around me snapped to attention and I discovered 15 years of
marriage hadn't made my wife blurry after all.
My wife liked her new glasses, too, but I'm not sure she needs them.
Even without corrective lenses, she's always been able to see right
through me.
Tim Bete's column has been featured in the
Christian Science Monitor and more than a dozen parenting magazines.
His column has also appeared on CatholicExchange.com, ParentingHumor.com, CatholicMom.com and iParenting.com.
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