Windows of the Soul

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I’m currently sitting at the computer wearing my wife’s glasses, trying to focus on what I’m typing. It’s not easy as she has bi-focals and at the moment, only the stronger, lower part of the glasses make much difference, so I'm constantly having to tilt my head back and forth, and dizzyness is never far away.

Under normal circumstances I don’t need glasses but I’ve just come back from a check-up at the optician .


photo of me in the optician's chair, courtesy
of my daughter, Meg, using my mobile phone

Apparently I have unusually small pupils (and I’m not even a nursery school teacher… ba-dum tish!) and this, means I have better eyesight than I should at my level of deterioration.

If you’re into photography, it’s basically all to do with smaller apertures giving a larger depth of focus/ depth of field (click here for Wikipedia’s explanation). If you’re not, and weren’t interested in lenses and light in physics lessons in school then you probably won’t want a long explanation now either, so I'll not bother.

So if my eyesight’s better than it should be because of a quirk of nature, why am I wearing my wife’s glasses just now?

Well my tiny pupils meant the optician couldn’t actually take a photo of my retina, so had to give me eye drops to widen them. The image he had up on his screen moments later looked blurry to me, but he assured me it was in focus and my retinas looked fine.

Even blurred I thought they looked kinda cool, so I asked if he could email them to me. He took my email address and if/when they turn up, I’ll stick them on this blog post.

He warned me everything would be out of focus for a couple of hours, and when we stepped out into the sunlight I was virtually blinded by the glare. Meg had to lead me home by the hand as I squinted and stumbled along the pavement.

Meanwhile, it does at least finally explain a minor mystery that's occasionally bothered me over the years.

We once watched a programme on TV about how when you fancy someone, your pupils get larger when you look at them. Maggie was always deeply suspcious of the fact mine never became huge, despite my protestations that I did indeed fancy her something rotten. Enlarged pupils for me are just ordinary sized for everyone else, it seems.



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