A true story

I have worn glasses since I was 3 or 4 years old. Yes, I was one of those poor young souls plagued by the big plastic lenses and frames, called 4-eyes by all the other kids, and generally considered more intelligent than my peers and therefore "different" (not in a good way) by young and old alike. I don't supposed it helped that I was a quiet child, and that I tested well. I'm convinced that with the right stylist, I could have been as cute as that kid in Jerry Maguire. Cuter.

For many years, I thought I had been cursed because when I was very young, I disobeyed my grandma and ran through her house with her little Sheltie chasing me and I ran *smack* into a door. The august beginning of a classic clutz. Naturally, I hit the door with my face, right on the edge of the panel of wood, resulting in a dramatic cut down the right side of my forehead and a spectacular black eye, which grew to two over the course of the week before fading. This particular injury had the Child Welfare folks at my house, questioning my mother about why she was hitting me, since the story about running into the wall was apparently too hard to believe. Just for your information, my mom only spanked me twice that I can remember, and they were well-deserved occassions, I assure you.

Anyway. Turns out that as a result of the black eyes and the trips to the optometrist to make sure that I would recover from my own gracelessness, they discovered a weak nerve somehow connected to my left eye. Nothing but coke-bottle vision aides would help. But first, and this was the fun part, they put some sort of solution in my eyes that made everything blurry for what seemed to my little 3 or 4 year old brain as weeks, but were probably just a few days. And it was at Christmas time, which made it all the more special (it was an adventure ... the social ostracism happened a while later).

The point of this long, not-very-well-told tale is to point out the Tree Blog, where you can post pictures of your holiday tree. And some of those trees look just like the trees I remember from that pivotal year that I got glasses. [via Jish]