My husband and I share a history of nearsightedness.
When asked to identify letters on the blackboard, I said, “What letters?”
Steve said, “What blackboard?”
With eyeglasses, though, my physician spouse recognizes germs a mile away. However, he cannot see a kitchen range. Returning from an evening away, I find dishes symmetrically loaded in the dishwasher, kitchen gadgets polished — and spaghetti-encrusted pans on the tomato-y stove.
“Oh … I didn’t see those.”
Neither can he see leftovers unless placed on the fridge’s top shelf. Even if I attached a neon sign to food elsewhere, he’d microwave a frozen dinner or starve.
I, too, have blind spots. I can’t see fissures in his 30-year-old lunch Tupperware® containers. They were guaranteed for life. Therefore, cracks do not exist. Just eat the bologna sandwich, okay?
A friend insisted I replace the blackened wooden spoon my kid lit during a power outage.
I shrugged. “Why? It still works.”
Our challenged vision extends beyond the kitchen. He declares I never notice a sick computer’s symptoms until I bring it, clasping a lily, to him to fix.
He should talk about lilies? In my absence, Hubby doesn’t see thirsty plants, even when they email him photos of Death Valley.
Heaven help our finances if I leave the checkbook in my bag.
Hubby growls, “Which purse?” He wants a GPS reading.
I growl back, “Front closet, second shelf, tan purse with black trim, largest zippered pocket inside—”
“This bag?”
I roll my eyes. “That’s black with tan trim.”
Eventually he locates it. “I still don’t see the checkbook.”
“You’re blind. The checkbook’s in there.”
At the word “there,” his nearsighted eyes widen in terror.
Hubby associates it with minor interstate-related incidents. When he’s driving 70, and I say, “Go there” — to the exit across six lanes of traffic to the station with the cheapest gas or the last of Nevada’s two rest areas, he doesn’t see it.
But he insists I deny the existence of semitrailers.
Ha! As if, with his lousy eyesight, he would know.
Besides, I find denial very comforting.
I admit, though, that though Hubby never sees dirty pans, checkbooks or cheap gas, he can spot labels poking out of my clothes from Chicago.
You would think he’d also mention wrinkles and poundage on my face and frame. But he doesn’t.
I still see the twinkling blue eyes and cute grin of the boy I dated in high school.
Neither of us can read phone books or decipher teeny-tiny scores on TV screens. But when it comes to each other, we have perfect vision.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you and your spouse blind?