Looking for What I’m Looking For

I was drilled from an early age to understand the difference between any old “eye doctor” and an ophthalmologist, because just any old eye doctor wasn’t going to understand my eyes.  I was wearing glasses by the time I was five, had surgery for a wandering eye when I was six, and could have been declared legally blind if it weren’t for contact lenses.  With lenses I can read with my left eye, which enabled me to survive as an academic. 

Here in Britain, the professional titles are different, and I apparently need to look for an ophthalmic optician.  Yesterday I asked the receptionist at our local doctor’s office if she could recommend someone.  She looked at me as if I had asked for directions to the nearest brothel.  One of the nurses recommended the local pharmacy where they do routine eye checks. 

The local pharmacy definitely will not do.  I can’t believe I can’t find someone in Cambridge.  The information on the internet is basically the phone book, and seems to be based on the assumption that people will be satisifed if they can find someone in the vicinity. 

In the teeth of my ignorance, I’ve decided to make an appointment with DJThomas whose listing says he does a series of computer-generated tests, and he’s in Cambridge.  Not a whole lot to set him apart from the others, but I can’t see how I can learn more.  Peter says asking our GP is what he would have done, but I wasn’t encouraged by the response I got from the front desk.

North-South Divides

In England, as in so many other countries, there is a clear difference between the customs and attitudes of people in the north and south.  We visited friends in the North yesterday, and Diana asked me whether I found living in Cambridge (which is in the south) very different from living in the northern Lakes.  Diana was born and raised in the south and moved north when she got married.  She said what at first she thought was nosiness by northern busy bodies she now thinks is often really a form of friendliness. 

I find this an intriguing possibility.  I’ve often thought as an American over here in Europe that what as an American I think of as polite interest is perceived as intrusive.  I remember asking a Belgian woman once why she’d moved to Spain.  She told me more about a distressing and abusive relationship with her husband than either of us felt comfortable with, but I had the impression that she didn’t know how not to answer my question without being impolite herself.  Even now I am not always comfortable asking people about themselves for fear my interest will be misunderstood.

I would find it interesting to hear about the experiences other people have had:  of Americans, by Americans as well of Europeans and by Europeans, and especially of and by the English.

Driving Blindly

My eyesight has been deteriorating for some time, and I have reached the point where I must take it seriously.

The most annoying signals that something is wrong have come from Peter in the passenger seat of the car.  Like the foot suddenly stretched into the breaking position, accompanied by gasps of combined panic and relief.  That has latterly been supplemented with verbal directions:  “get into the right lane now,” “signal you are going to turn left,” “there’s a bicycle on the road ahead of you.”  He’s never done that before, and my confidence in my ability to drive is withering.  I fear, though, that my confidence deficit might be a realistic response to my increasing driving capacity deficit.

It started when we moved to England where I had to learn to drive on the right instead of the left of the road, in the process of which I:  a) once turned into the oncoming lane of traffic, b) missed a stop sign to the terror of my passenger and loud annoyance of the oncoming vehicle, c) began to confuse “turn left,” with “turn right.”  I am now thinking I’m endangering the lives of my passengers.  If I don’t kill them in a road accident, they are going to expire from a heart attack.I am having trouble reading the text that scrolls across the bottom of the television screen, and I have moved my computer monitor closer to my face.  I’m also not reading as much because it is fatiguing.  I have cataracts but last year the optician didn’t suggest they were a problem yet.

I must find an ophthalmologist.

Creative Reconstruction

If it’s really really important – like if you’ve just shredded what you thought was junk and your husband does not share your evaluation – it is possible to put a shredded document back together again. 

For the record, I lacked motivation.

To Tell the Truth

My sister Bernadette sent me a birthday card with a quote from Edith Sitwell:  “I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty, but I am too busy thinking about myself.”

Since retirement, I have luxuriatied in the realization that I can stop promoting myself. People I meet don’t have to be told in some subtle or less subtle way that I am a cognitive developmental psychologist with this and that specialization and have held this or that professional position, have achieved this or that recognition, been responsible for whatever in the specialized world where I made my living.  I’ve never been any good at it anyway.  I hated doing it, and although I sometimes wished when I watched others that I could describe my own achievements in similarly glowing terms, I also found it somewhat distasteful.

Ah, but let me not subtly suggest that you are reading the blog of someone who is too humble to tell you about herself, covertly a retired professor from Harvard, perhaps, someone who has served on the President’s Council for Gifted Students, or a best-selling author whose name you would recognize behind the cloak of my pen name.  If I blow myself up very big, I can make a number of things on my vita sound quite grand.   But they really weren’t.  

What I was, what I loved being, was a university professor, a teacher.  I loved my students, especially I loved pushing my brightest students further than they ever thought they could go.  My world kept expanding because they were pushing me as hard as I was pushing them.  That’s really what I’ve done.