Blind(s)

In preparation for my daughter’s triumphal return home from college, my wife created a list of improvements and to-do’s to accomplish before she arrived at the house. One of my jobs was to move the blinds from her room, hang them in the garage (replacing the old, damaged blinds currently hanging there) and then hang a new set of blinds over her bedroom window. This was not a complicated chore since all the brackets and hardware were in place; it was just a small matter of sliding out and sliding in.

I measured (twice) to make sure I bought the correct replacement blind and travelled to Lowe’s for the purchase and subsequent trimming of the width. Back home with my purchase, I began the process by taking down the old blinds in my daughter’s room. I quickly figured out that it would be easier to transport the old blinds if I pulled them up and compressed them as far as I could, making them compact and less wobbly. I pulled the string down, hard, to roll them up and was suddenly falling back on the bed, my head throbbing and vision blurred. Apparently one of the brackets had come loose and the force of my pull had dislodged the blind and it had whacked me in the head. I was initially stunned but then grew scared when I realized I couldn’t see, at least I couldn’t see clearly. My vision was impaired, alternating between blurry and clear but with no ability to focus on anything for more than a second or two. I looked around the room, blinking, trying to regain any sort of visual clarity. “Oh Jesus, I can’t be blind, I can’t be blind. I need my eyes.” I was praying out loud, panicked and not sure what to do. No one else was home and all I could think was my life had changed in an instant.

I stumbled to my daughter’s bathroom, expecting to see a huge gash across my head and was surprised that, through the blur, all I could detect was a small slash of red near my hairline. Now I was confused. Did a glancing blow damage my eyesight that drastically? Is this one of those head shaking moments that no one will be able to explain? Then I started thinking more practically. How was I going to explain this to people? Blinded by the blind? Would people eventually make fun of me after a period of time? Why didn’t I learn to touch type? I pulled my glasses off to rub my eyes and when I reopened them, things were still blurry, but they weren’t as dizzying blurry; there was a consistency to the haze. As I reached to put my glasses back on, my thumb poked through the left side of the frame—right where one of the lenses was supposed to be. Apparently, the blow to my head had dislodged the left lens of my glasses and I had been looking through one lens with my right eye and looking through air with my left. I wasn’t blind after all, just temporarily broken. I was able to locate the missing lens on the floor, replaced it and relished the restoration of vision for a few minutes before I raised my hands in the air and let everyone in the house (which was no one) know, “I’m alright! Everything is fine! Nothing to see here. Move along.”

I see this as a sign that I should get back on those typing lessons.