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Column: The vision thing

James Bornemeier
James Bornemeier

My father was a huge fan of big band music so it was no surprise that our little family was parked at the vast drive-in theater off old Route 66 in St. Louis to see “The Benny Goodman Story,” starring Steve Allen as the famed jazz clarinetist.

It was during that movie I announced that the whole thing was fuzzy and so marked the official beginning of my lifelong acquaintanceship with nearsightedness.

I began wearing glasses full-time in second grade and gained modest notoriety for my Davy Crockett-themed spectacles with long rifles on the temples. Dianne Garrison, the first and hardest crush in my life, thought they were very cool and they bonded us intensely until she and her family callously moved away midway through 4th grade, the same year I asked her out to dinner, with my parents, of course, to the Green Parrot, a popular local restaurant on a ridge overlooking the Missouri River.

I don’t remember any parrot but, beyond all imagining, there was a live peacock near the front door. Dianne, if you’re out there and reading this, just know that my feelings for you are undiminished although that pair of eyeglasses is long gone.

In high school I segued to contact lenses, what we now call “hard” contacts for they were rigid chips of plastic, not the soft, squishy, wear-them-once lenses of today. My brother wore them too. One night he announced at dinner that he had lost one during football practice. My father ran his uncle’s optical company so this was of no significance.

Another lens could be replaced the next day. But my mother, some Nebraskan steeliness kicking in, insisted that we look for the lens in the dark, in the heavily pummeled dirt of the practice field. This was utterly preposterous but we took our flashlights and headed to the nearby high school. Do you sense where this is going?

I have always taken credit for it but over the years others have grabbed at owning the discovery. But I, and only I, spotted a glint in the mud where the lens sat on a spike of dirt beside two deep cleat indentations. Sad to say, but this ranks as one of the greatest Bornemeier family stories.

Late in life, my mother, to my amazement, said it was my father who insisted on the search. But she was wrong.

My vision got worse as the years wore on. I needed bifocals and moved back to eyeglasses. As of 2015, I had no complaints about my eyesight, although my optometrist warned that I was approaching the end of beefing up the power of my lenses.

He had also been tracking a cataract in my right eye and said I would know when to take care of that. It seemed to happen overnight. In January 2016 the right eye became useless for distance vision, although it remained the go-to eye for reading. I trudged through the year and decided to have the cataract surgically removed.

We had a surgery date set for April but out of nowhere, after picking up my grandson from school, my right eye was flooded with “floaters,” those amorphous-shaped images that, yes, float in the jelly-like vitreous of your eyeball. Mine were black and I had been warned for years to report any black ones. Sure enough, a retinal expert found two retinal tears and lasered them the same day.

Having your retina lasered seems pretty exotic, but it’s remarkably ordinary. There’s no pain, other than when the doctor hits the optic nerve with the laser beam, causing immediate small headaches.

A follow-up visit found two more tears and now I’m on a regular series of examinations. The cataract surgery is on hold.

The retina expert is Dr. Englebert, a guy I have taken a liking to. He is affable, good at his chosen field and an enthusiastic shaker of hands. I lament the growing infrequency of hand-shaking and go out of my way to do my part in keeping the tradition going. Englebert comes into the examination room leading with his out-stretched right hand, a good way to start the visit.

Last Friday was one of those summery days. I chose to wear shorts and a T-shirt to Englebert’s office in the city. After the hand-shake he took a good look at my T-shirt. I had randomly chosen a Shelter Island shirt, probably 15 years old, from Bliss’s, the one with the black outline of the Island on the front and no other identifying clues.

“Where is that?” he said.

“Shelter Island,” I said and pointed to the middle of the black shape and said, “We have a house right there.”

“Oh yes,” he now said knowingly. “Then the Ram’s Head must be right there,” pointing correctly off to the side of Cocecle’s Harbor. “And the Pridwin would be down there.” Right again. He and his wife love the Pridwin. I told him my step-son got married there. “Oh how wonderful,” he said.

After the exam, I aggressively stuck out my hand for a parting shake and he was ready for it, good and firm.