I had to go to the eye doctor for my exam the other day, an annual endeavor for me these days. As some of you might know, my vision isn't exactly 20/20. It's more like 20/25, with a little blur thrown in at all ranges just for good measure.

The little tests they do, like looking down a cartoon road, getting air blown in your eye and reading the chart on the wall, are all pretty easy to handle.

However, as a person who has some risk factors for glaucoma, I end up getting my pupils dilated every time I go. In case you haven't had that experience, it involves getting some drops placed in your eyes that feel something akin to acid, followed by some other drops that don't feel like acid.

Then in a few minutes, the eye doctor takes me back to a big camera and takes a picture of the inside of my eye through my wide-open pupils. Afterwards for several hours, I find myself unable to focus properly, unable to read and hypersensitive to light. Luckly, it only lasts about four hours, during which time I wear my sunglasses, including inside the building.

The doctor explained to me that I have rather small pupils, really, which is why he needs to use the camera to check the back of my eyes every time. I heard something about two millimeters, in case any of my readers happen to be opthamologists. I wonder if having small pupils should give me some sort of a complex in the future? No doubt it makes it much more difficult for me to see in the dark. Maybe that's why I have incredibly banged up shins and very frightened toes as I walk to the bathroom at night. Or then again, it might be because some people tend to leave the vacuum cleaner wherever it may have been when it was switched off the day before. "I was using that," is the story I hear when I start complaining about the placement, which sometimes is in the middle of the hallway.

My continuing argument is this, "If the switch isn't on, no one is using it. It's just left in the way because 'someone' didn't put it away."

To which I am sometimes asked, "Why don't you just put it away then?"

"But I didn't get it out," I reply exasperated.

"But you are the one it is bothering," comes the coy reply. "I'm still using it."

So, to prevent delving into such mundane discussions ad nauseum, I'll stop there to prevent undue reader discomfort. It is very similar to the 'discussions' we have had about the toothpaste. I have trouble understanding why one can't return the lid, tightly closed, to the tube when finished dispensing.

"But it's on there," comes the answer.

My thought is, "It isn't on there properly." In fact, sometimes when I pick it up, the lid falls off and the top of the inside of the lid eventually gets so gooped up that it wouldn't tighten if one tried.

The last thing one wants to face after tripping over a vacuum cleaner is a goopy toothpaste cap. Yuck. You guessed it, I also am the one who squeezes the toothpaste from the bottom and other people, who shall remain nameless, tend to squeeze in the middle. Toward the end, I usually end up using the toothbrush handle to scrape up the outside of the tube in order to extract those last three or four uses. Yes, I'm one of those.

Did I mention I fell over the vacuum cleaner, a dangerous instrument if ever there was one? That doesn't even include the cord extending menacingly across the entirety of the path from my living room television nirvana to my nighttime resting spot on the other end of the house. Not to mention the incremental restroom trips through which I have to navigate the dark hall with my undersized pupils.

I'm sure someone somewhere is working on a disadvantaged class association for those of us with small pupils, like those who are 'height deficient,' 'environmentally disadvantaged' and 'socially challenged.'

Maybe we'll join up as the group who are 'pupily insufficient.' (Would that have one 'l' or two? I'm sure someone in the club will know eventually).

Anyway, that really wouldn't be as much of a problem if there weren't a vacuum cleaner in the middle of the hall at 4:45 a.m. when I get up for my bathroom break.

I think I could almost tell time by the way my body behaves. For instance, I get sleepy at 11 p.m., I usually need to go to the bathroom at least once, usually around 5 a.m., trip over the vacuum cleaner and wake up automatically about one hour after that. I've been hoping I might get the timing down to the point where I could wake up and go to the bathroom around the same time, but sometimes that doesn't work out.

Well, that didn't exactly sound like what I really meant, but I hope you read that in the best possible way. I always get up before going to the bathroom, it's just that sometimes that's the only reason I'm up. Other than tripping over the vacuum cleaner, that is.

I managed to miss it the other night, but still stepped on the fat end of the plug bare footed and ended up jumping up and down and tripping over the cord anyway. I sometimes wonder at those times if these are really traps that have been set for me. In talks with law enforcement officials, I have heard of people setting out five-gallon buckets behind a residence for unwary attempted escapees to find en route to an otherwise fleet-footed escape. Perhaps this, too, is a way to track my movements around the house. At least tacks aren't being employed—or buckets for that matter. At least not yet.

In the meantime, I've found it best to simply stop mentioning these little bones of contention in life, instead trying to focus on what's really important, like applying salve to my bruised legs and installing a nightlight at the end of the hall that is hopefully brighter than the installer.

At least that way us folks with small pupils will have a fighting chance at getting by the obstacle course of life without undue injury and discomfort.

If that doesn't work, I might start leaving several pairs of my size 12 shoes near the end of someone else's side of the bed.
 

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