How big is the moon to your eyes? Remember yourself challenge, Day 2.

Wasn't sure what I was going to post today... had a lot of vague ideas, but nothing jumped out with the clarity that heralded yesterday's post.

Until I read today's post by Amanda C. :]

This was something I hadn't really forgotten... but was it slipping away? How would you know if a memory is dying?

When I was little, I needed glasses. In fact, I needed them for years and years before I got them, or was even tested. Several teachers from very early on recommended that I have my vision checked, but my mom and grandma (who raised me) never did it till years later. It could have been because we didn't have much money. That was an ever-present factor that I was never aware of as a young child. Like everyone viewing a circumstance solidly from within their own perspective, we had what we had and that was the way things were, and isn't it the same for everybody? :] Or it could have been due to some strangeness of our overlord, my grandma, who was weird to say the least. But that's possibly tomorrow's story.

My vision worsened, and as it went without correction, it got hard for me to see shit all in school. So finally, I got taken to an optometrist. It was odd for me; I didn't know what to expect. What would they do to my small, sensitive eyes? Do they, like, cut them or something? I had no idea.

I can't quite remember the doctor's name. It's almost painful, because it's like stretching for something just out of reach, something that used to be a part of something of me. She had something similar to our family name, I think; which was odd because of our family name was pretty uncommon.

Regardless, and back to the point, I went through my eye exam interested but rather unimpressed compared to what I had imagined they might do. They blew in my eyes and made me look at things I couldn't see, like the eye chart.

Doctor: "Read the chart, please."

Me: "E."

Doctor: "Go on."

Me: "That's it, the rest is a blur."

Doctor: "..."

That may not be verbatim, but it's what happened nonetheless.

Unsurprisingly, I got glasses that day.

I remember looking though glasses, racks and racks of them, with my mother. I had to limit it to the cheaper racks of course, but it still took a bit of time. If you've never needed glasses, you probably don't realize how difficult it is, in a way; you can see the glasses fine while you're wearing your old pair. But then when you put the display pair on, you can't see what they look like on you. So it's a guessing game that can greatly influence how you look for the next year or two.

But I walked out of there with glasses, a simple but nice vaguely rectangular silver pair. They felt weird, I'd never had anything hitching a ride on my face before that wasn't a bug or something. The clarity was unreal, but it didn't fully sink in until I looked up.

It was nighttime.

I saw the moon.

And I was literally stunned.

I stood staring, looking, absorbing. It was fully 1/5 of its size or less than I was accustomed to. It also had all of this odd texture to it, these marks and such... It wasn't a shiny flat silver at all! Is this what they meant by it looking pockmarked? You mean people can actually see the craters without a scope?

That moment re-wrote the way I understood things. You see, I had never understood that my vision was bad. I heard, I knew what they said, but I didn't understand what that meant. I assumed that the way I saw, was roughly how everyone saw. That moment re-wrote my very concept of physics, in a way. My knowledge of what an unaided human could do, and everything that came from that.

I looked up, saw the moon as others always had, and had taken for granted. Just as I had taken my bad vision for granted. And it shattered my perceptions like the glass now seated on my face. It was wondrous.

Now, I have laser eye surgery. There are some issues, but it's roughly 20/20. After years of having to have glasses or contacts, it's amazing. But in the end, I wouldn't change the past. Having always had perfect vision would, in the end, have robbed me of much.

We manifest into this world, as we are, for a reason.