I’ve often thought about a time in my toddler years when I used to stare at the sun. After being picked up from preschool in the late afternoon, I would sit quietly in the backseat and contemplate my thoughts through the lens of a 4 year old. When I would get bored rather quickly, I would play a little game with myself, staring at the sun and counting to twenty, seeing if I could burn a “cool” orange circle into my eyes when I closed them. If my eyes reflexively closed before I got to my target time, my toddler self would convince my eyes to take a short break and then try again. Other times, I would press on my eyes really hard until I saw a glowing effect on the back of my eyelids. I think at some point, my mom must have realized what I was doing, and would tell me to do eye exercises instead, a series of eye movements she taught me to help relax. She would instruct me to look out the window, but instead of relaxing, I would go back to playing my game with the sun (honestly, toddlers do weird things).
At this point, readers would perhaps wonder if I registered an eyesight decline from those moments staring into the sun. I remember going to the eye doctor and struggling to see much of anything and squinting at virtually everything, but I never realized that I had trouble seeing. From my flawed worldview, my vision was perfect vision. Sometimes, people would hold up their hands, showing me their fingers and asking me how many they were holding up. I always found this action to be quite meaningless: I didn’t have dizzy vision, I just saw blurred fingers. A short while after my eye doctor appointment, my skeptical self finally registered a possible connection between my habit and my declining vision, and I reluctantly stopped playing my game.
Looking back, I contemplate why I would ever look straight at the sun, albeit through tinted windows. The teachers in preschool even taught us not to look straight at the sun during recess, but at the time, I just didn’t care, rules meant nothing to me. Being rebellious as a toddler brought me a sense of satisfaction for doing something I wasn’t allowed to do. Examining my toddler years from the present, the idea of doing something so ridiculous seems implausible, but the feeling of independence when using my “ingenious” way to entertain myself was difficult to relinquish in the moment.
With my improved, albeit still flawed outlook , I often wish I could return to my naïve four-year-old body and be a little kinder to my eyes. As a direct result of my early vision deterioration, I had to get vision correction in the form of nighttime cornea correction lenses that would re-shape my eyes each night to correct the curvature of my eyes. This resulted in many painful nights where the correction lenses weren’t in my eyes perfectly and would agitate my eyelids. Of course, as a four-year-old, I couldn’t possibly have known the consequences, but I often wonder how my vision would have panned out in the long run. Nowadays, I bear the all-to-real burden of bad eyesight and I wear contacts daily (the nighttime lenses were terrible). As a jealous human being, I wish I could have the perfect vision that some people naturally have, although I definitely didn’t make any great decisions to help myself along that path. Finally, I want to say that my silly game probably wasn’t the only contributing factor to my terrible vision now, but I like to hand most of the blame to my past self.
I really like your essay. I definitely agree that there are many things we did in the past we would never do now. You talk about your past in an informal and almost teasing way, which makes your story more connectable. I especially liked the sentence, "From my flawed worldview, my vision was perfect vision." The word choice here ("worldview," "vision") describes contrasting points on the same topic, which I thought sounded cool. I also like the way you organized your essay, starting with background information and then providing your present-day thoughts on the experience. One tiny improvement I would make is the transition into the last sentence. The word "Finally" feels a little rough, so I might say to change that to another transition phrase that incorporates the previous sentence, like "However" (since you are contrasting your previous sentence with the final sentence). Nonetheless, great job!
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you were able to pick out a moment that still affects you to this day. It's not just something that is embarrassing, but doesn't actually affect you now. No, this is a choice that you made in the past that hurt your vision, and now you are still trying to recover from that mistake. You also seem to be authentic, acknowledging your current outlook may still be flawed and you also mention your human jealousy. You present multiple experiences that are purposeful because they are related to your eyesight. You present your current and past viewpoints on this experience. You just seem to incorporate many of the ideas that we learned from Lopate. If I had to make a suggestion, I would say perhaps you could use more conversational tone. But, overall, I think was was a well-written essay.
ReplyDeleteYour story was very compelling and I was intrigued reading it. I really liked how you didn't just say you regretted the game, but talked about your regrets by delving into specific details such as vision correction you had to do. I liked the humor you employed in the last paragraph, noting that even though the game may not have been the only factor in your poor vision, you choose to blame your toddler self. Great essay!
ReplyDeleteRyan, you're a great storyteller! I love how you built up the narrative, sprinkling in additional details as you progressed through the paragraphs. At the beginning, I wondered why you would return to being a toddler staring at the sun, but your essay did a great job of slowly revealing your regrets.
ReplyDeleteYour first sentence of the second paragraph, "At this point, readers would perhaps wonder if I registered an eyesight decline from those moments staring into the sun," made me laugh with its bluntness and unexpected mention of the reader. You took the question out of my mouth and did a great job of conversing with the audience. The tone of your essay, with its subtle, slightly sarcastic humor, made this a really engaging read—you did a great job of taking us along for the story!
Ryan, you're a great storyteller! I love how you built up the narrative, sprinkling in additional details as you progressed through the paragraphs. At the beginning, I wondered why you would return to being a toddler staring at the sun, but your essay did a great job of slowly revealing your regrets.
ReplyDeleteYour first sentence of the second paragraph, "At this point, readers would perhaps wonder if I registered an eyesight decline from those moments staring into the sun," made me laugh with its bluntness and unexpected mention of the reader. You took the question out of my mouth and did a great job of conversing with the audience. The tone of your essay, with its subtle, slightly sarcastic humor, made this a really engaging read—you did a great job of taking us along for the story!
*Sorry for the duplicate comment; I wasn't logged in the first time.*