Blind Spot

“Read line 6. . . . pretty good!”

“Now the left, Line 4. . . 6. . .  9. . .13. . . Read that again. . . are there hawks in your family?” “Now the right… 4?  The first line?. . . Oh, ho. HO! A Blyndee!”

I was twenty-three and having the first headaches of my life. I was doing some close work at my new job, reading pencil entries in the agency schedule of client speaking engagements. My young wife asked, “Have you had your eyes checked?”

“Not since high school, but my vision is really good. I was tested every year at school.”

“I’m going to see Dr. Lloyd to check my contacts when we’re in New York. Why don’t you come along?”

The conversation above is Dr. Lloyd‘s vocalizations during my eye exam.

“Do you trip walking up stairs?” He asked. “Used to a lot. Not so much anymore.”

He ran some more tests, asked me to pick up things with thumb and index finger from various locations in his office, some high, some low. I did OK, but not perfect.

“You have developed some monocular depth perception, but I have rarely seen a disparity like this. Your left eye is 20/6, which means you see at twenty feet what you should see at six. Your right eye is 20/300, it sees at twenty feet what it should see at three hundred feet. Your right eye is legally blind. Did you ever have your eyes tested? Do you drive?”

“Well, yeah, every year at school. And yes, I drive.”

“School tests are often two-eye tests, and you are a little below normal with both eyes, but the DMV usually tests each eye separately. The bottom line is – it’s correctable, though your eyeballs are football-shaped [astigmatism]. You should not drive without glasses.”

I was stunned. I had no idea. But in the years since, I’ve realized that my vision explains some things.

I bought my first car when I was fourteen and took it in and out of our garage, where I worked on it. I would graze the door frame on the right side, and my father would yell at me to “Pay attention to what you’re doing!”

Little League

Later, it dawned on me that my Little League experience just might have been related. In Lexington, Mass, there was an active Little League program. There were more than thirty teams. Even that wasn’t enough. We were the front end of the baby boom. There were almost eight hundred people in my high school graduating class. So there were tryouts for Little League.

When I tell people, they say, “You had to try out for Little League? No way! Everybody makes Little League.” Nope. I can personally attest that it isn’t true.

There were about ten boys in our neighborhood boy pack. We rode bicycles together, played baseball in the kind of schoolyard and park pick-up games kids played back then.

When I look back on those games, I was never the last to be picked. David, my best friend, was the best player and often a team captain. Also, I could hit. With my good eye facing the pitcher, I hit pretty well, and I could get underneath a fly ball. In those games organized by eight old boys, I was rarely placed in the infield, certainly never on a base. Funny, how kids just figure out strengths and weaknesses. I was OK with the outfield; I \had a pretty good arm.

I remember the anticipation of Little League. The whole boypack knew the day you could pick up your number for tryouts at the Lexington Recreation Department. I remember being eight, not nine, starting Little League. I was going into the fourth grade because of my October birthday.

My red Columbia 20” bike was relatively new, and a bunch of us went down to Lexington Center together on our bicycles, about a mile away. We went early the first morning, but my number was already in triple digits. Tryouts were a few weeks away. There was a Christmastime-like period of excited anticipation.

The day came, and a bunch of us rode the two miles to the East Lexington Field. I’d never seen so many kids. You lined up by numbers. My neighborhood friends got numbers together, so we quickly juggled into line. My number was called with about twenty others. A man tossed a ball up and hit me a grounder on my right side, so I had to reach my glove across my body, bending down low. I missed the ball.

I remember thinking, “That’s OK. They’ll give me a fly next.” They pulled me off the field: “Try again next year.”

I rode home alone because the other kids were still trying out. I learned that after the grounder test, there were fly balls, throws to the bases, pitching for pitchers, running the bases, and finally hitting. In the batting test, you got three strikes; fielding was one missed grounder, and you’re out.

“Next year.” That’s pretty much what everyone said to me all summer as I went to the games to watch my friends play Little League baseball. Next year came. It was the same drill. I was older, but my friends were better. Tryouts came. The man hit me a grounder on my right side. “Next year.”

The third year was the same.

Midway through the second year, a guy, “Pop-somebody,” started a league for the kids who didn’t make a Little League team. We had a lot of fun, despite the fact that some of the older kids called it the “loser league.” Some Little Leaguers tried to join on Saturdays for a fun game without the pressure. Pop wouldn’t let them. “You boys have your own league.” We loved it.

The fourth year, I got my number like always, but on tryout day, I rode my bike to the Rez and skipped stones. I see now that part of the problem was my vision. I actually couldn’t see those grounders in my right side blind spot.

Impact

This sounds like a sad, whiny story of childhood trauma. Rejected – my childhood was miserable, and my adulthood a series of failures. It wasn’t like that. My childhood was a magical time.

I was the best in the neighborhood at climbing oak trees and tall granite outcroppings in the woods behind our houses. I learned to swim before others. I was always in the thick of capture the flag, hide and seek, and the battle games (cops and robbers, etc.) that kids of that time played. I have wonderful memories of camping trips, Boy Scouts, and boy-pack bike rides to Walden Pond, some six miles away.

Nor do I believe in participation trophies or that there shouldn’t be tryouts for Little League. Life is frequently competitive. It’s about collaboration, too, but you’d better be prepared to compete when required. I’m just puzzling through the effect my blind spot had on my life.

I never really took to team sports. My sporting activities in adulthood, skiing, running, mountain biking, and backpacking, are all individual, and I think I passed this on to my kids. How much of that was my unknown visual impairment? I dunno.

I’m not a wildly athletic person. I played football in my freshman year. I had a few moments, but mostly warmed the bench. I wasn’t driven to practice sports in a way that helps one get good. And I’m a little introverted and march to my own drummer, “kind of a weird kid” as my friend David described me later.

My team experience has been in theatre and business. This helped later facilitate teams. Unlike some of my colleagues, I wasn’t compelled to “join” teams I was facilitating.

I ponder this now because sometimes events shape our lives and we aren’t aware at the time – a missed connection, a decision based upon inadequate research, a capability not developed, an unknown blind spot.

Sometimes we see the blind spot, weakness, or capability that needs to be developed.

Opposite  ̶  Focus

After I was serendipitously chosen as the lead in a production of Carousel at sixteen, I really wanted to play the lead in the senior musical, which turned out to be “The King and I.” I took voice lessons, read about the Broadway production, and how Yule Brenner auditioned for the role (shaved head, sitting bare-chested on the stage playing a guitar and singing – the picture of confidence).

I rented and watched the King and I movie, watched  The Magnificent Seven, and Taras Bulba, starring Yul Brynner. In the days before videotape, this took some doing, and I’m sure my parents helped, but I just remember watching movies on a sheet tucked into the mirror in our living room. I practiced and practiced my audition piece, singing along with the record. I got the part; at my fiftieth high school reunion, people only remembered me as “The King.”

The difference between that experience and Little League? Was it the blind spot? Was it a known desire compared to an unknown constraint? Was it sixteen vs. eight? I don’t know.

Somehow, I learned to practice for what I wanted, to develop capability, and to ask for the help I needed. Did I learn to see my blind spots? I don’t know. But I think that may be a secret of success in life, the ability to see holes in capability, practice, and build the connections you need to fill them.

These days, at almost three-quarters of a century old, my friend Greg and I walk three miles together once a week. A few times, we’ve taken our baseball gloves to have a catch at the end of the walk. I think the young baseball players at the local field laugh a bit at the geezers playing catch, but we have fun. I will say, despite wearing eyeglasses for fifty years, I still suck at grounders.