Status Update: I'm Back

After two and a half pleasant weeks offline, I'm back. I have 24 pages of e-mail to sort through...and that's after checking the real mail.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened on the way in, worth sharing...

I was walking briskly along, hauling this poor old laptop on my shoulder, watching where I was going in my astigmatic way. Generally my left eye stays focussed in such a way as scan the road ahead and my right eye stays focussed in such a way as to see what's immediately under my feett.

This leaves several yards of middle distance of which my vision, unless I take time to refocus on something in that distance, is blurry. Mostly what's going on at that distance is that vehicles are moving, and I move further to the side of the road as indicated.

Occasionally, two or three times this morning because the rain had just stopped and people were just going out to do their morning errands, a person speaks to me from that distance. What I see of this person is a human-shaped blur. The voice is what tells me whether it's male or female, whether it's friend, nuisance, or stranger.

So this blur said "Hi," and the voice told me it was a male stranger, so I said "Hi" back and kept walking.

I usually do say "Hi" back to people who do this kind of tedious greeting, or greeding, routine, if only because that's the quickest way to brush them off. Since I have the type of aging ears to which my voice sounds louder than it does to other people, and I don't intend to shout, people don't always hear me say anything.

Extroverts have this sick, crazy need to assure themselves that, even though they have nothing to say to each other and no reason not to ignore each other, they're not ignoring each other in a hostile way. A lot of hostility seems to fill in the gap where a positive purpose ought to be in the extrovert mind. Yes, I do feel that throwing them the scrap of attention indicated by saying "Hi" is a bit like bowing to Haman, but I suppose they deserve a little crumb of a treat for waiting till they get into speaking distance and speaking quietly rather than screaming across the street. (I do ignore people who scream, or who blurt out names--whosever names those might be--in a, not really hostile, but actively discouraging way.)

Anyway this particular man apparently felt a need to prove he was a vague long-ago acquaintance rather than a street terrorist, because as I kept walking away and his voice told me he kept walking in the other direction, he said something like "I'm John Doe! Used to be married to Jane!"

And I caught myself thinking, "Mercy, Lord. Does this fellow now expect I'm going to recognize him? Is that why Jane left him?" (I don't know or care why they separated. It's none of my business.)

I caught myself trying to remember the visual impression I had of this John Doe. Well, he seemed to be of average size. I did not actually see his skin color, much less eye color, or whether or not he had hair or was wearing a hat. His shape suggested he was wearing a jacket and trousers, but leather jacket or denim jacket, jeans or khakis, boots or shoes? I had no idea. If he'd needed a witness to something that had just taken place, I would've been the world's worst. All I saw of him was an average-man shape with the light behind it. No details whatsoever.

So now what happens? If he's a nice quiet introvert with a life, he'll get on with his life. Good. If he's a tiresome extrovert, he'll start fretting about whether I was ignoring him in a hostile way and how to reassure himself that he's taking control of that situation. Not good.

I really think we need a solid rule of etiquette that, if you don't have something to say that makes it worth stopping and focussing your attention on each other, you don't speak.

But the funny part is that probably 95% of all humans, including visually impaired humans who imagine that all people with 20-20 vision see everything in detail right away, would imagine that I'd actually seen this man's face--and I didn't see his face at all. I saw that he was moving in my direction, which would have been hard to do without its having been possible for me to have seen his face if I'd stopped and focussed my eyes on it...but I did not do that.

If asked to testify in court whether he was Black or White, I would have had to say that I believe that I did look at his face once, twenty-five or thirty years ago, and if he's the same person I believe him to be then he's White--but I did not actually see that.

Such is life with astigmatism.

If you know any of the people who fret about what it "means" that someone didn't speak to them on the street, you might do people with astigmatism the courtesy of reminding those people of the possibility that those who don't speak to them may not see them.