The Vision Thing

No, this is not about George H. W. Bush famously dismissing criticism of his inability to express any inspiring long term goals for America. This is a pre-election break for some non-political good news (though it can also be seen as having some political implications, as so many matters do).

Here is an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a County Councilwoman who discovered a connection between juvenile delinquency and bad eyesight and has started a process of giving kids eye tests and corrective lenses.

I remember when I was in the fourth grade and a public health nurse came to our Catholic elementary school and had each of us look at the eye chart and tell her what we saw. I could barely see the chart and was quickly diagnosed as being quite myopic. Getting glasses did not cause me concern about compromising my good looks, for I had already learned I was not at all handsome. What the glasses did do was open up a new world I did not know existed - the world of things seen by many others but previously unseen by me.

My brother Larry is three years older than me and he served as an altar boy. During the most sacred part of the Mass, the sound of bells would come from the altar, but in my pre-spectacles mode, I could see no source for them. I asked Larry and he told me it was a miracle. Though I believed in miracles, I did not always believe my brother. So I started sitting in the front row at Mass and squinting really hard (a technique that moderately improved the picture). I noticed that the arm of one of the altar boys seemed to be shaking about the time the bells were ringing. I asked Larry. He explained the boy was trembling from proximity to the holy source. I squinted again and noticed only one of the two altar boys had the tremble. My brother pointed out the trembler was kneeling one step higher. Larry went on to a successful career in sales. I had a brief tour as an altar boy, including ringing the bells at the appropriate time, which I had difficulty doing on account of stage fright.

After I got glasses, my mother told me that one of the nuns who taught me in an earlier grade had suggested I be taken to a personal counselor, because I was continuously making faces at her during class. Actually, I had just been squinting to try to see what she was showing the class. I don't know if my glasses played a part in saving me from juvenile delinquency. There was no marked improvement in my report cards after I got glasses. Reading and writing had worked alright, as long as I could get my nose within a couple inches of the page or paper. Maybe I can blame my bad penmanship on early vision problems; but I haven’t figured how myopia can take the blame for poor grades in singing.

Think of the wonderful impact on the future of our children if they all had free access to medical care and if our medical system acknowledged that teeth and eyes are also part of the human body.