Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Practical Ageing Experience in the Young 1001:5



In the 50’s, both the Cold War and my Education were in the making. And the Cold War, I feel sure, contributed to my learning of How to Grow Old, in a small way.

Until I was in Third Grade, I didn’t know I was near-sighted. I thought the world looked fuzzy to everybody. Then Mrs. Spitz, my Third Grade teacher who was not particularly nice, told my Mom that since I couldn’t see the blackboard, I should get my eyes checked. I did and got my very first pair of ice-blue-frame glasses, which the optometrist assured me matched my blue eyes and which traumatized me for eyeglass fashion ever after.

However that may be, having glasses made me aware that without glasses, life was unclear and slightly dangerous. Now that I had found them, how would I find my way in the world without them? At around the same time, or maybe before or after, it became popular for optimistic people with the means and with over-worked imagination to build bomb shelters. The bomb shelters were the survival ace-in-the-hole over Communists planning to wipe-Americans off the planet, stealing our idea from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. According to news articles and my brother, a good deep basement that was sealed off with its own air circulation, a pantry full of canned goods, and we’d last until the radiation thinned down enough for him to send me out and test breathe the air. This was the same brother who told me that the cat digging in the sandbox was trying to get to China, and I believed him then, too.

The bomb shelters back in my youth were not so different from the duct-taped air-tight rooms recommended shortly after the attack on the Trade Towers on 9/11, to have "safe rooms" which the impending nerve gas follow-up attacks would surely require. Neither of these defense plans were realistically effective to meet the challenges set forth for them, it has since been determined. In the 60’s, I remember getting to visit one of the shelters that a distant relative had built. It was like a smallish basement, set off on one side of his property, and pretty unimpressive. He never got to try it out, but he kept lots of bottled water in it in case. He was not very nice, either, and wouldn't let kids play in it.

We did, however, practice tornado drills at school to stymie The Bomb. In our grades 1-8 gradeschool, we ducked under our desks with enthusiasm and sincerity for tornado drills, and the teachers requisitioned this same move to drill for bombs.  However, we mere students couldn't really see how this would save us from The Bomb, and mentioned it to our intellectual superiors.  Our teachers put their heads together and came up with the comforting untruth that the desks would save us from falling debris from the aftershock of a nuclear attack, and we were too far from any likely strike epicenters to catch the radiation, anyway. We bought it.   Life was so easy then.

Even with Mrs. Spitz and Co.'s insincere comforting lies, I felt that more was needed in case The Worst happened.  Without my eyeglasses, I was on the absolute Bottom Rung of Darwins Survival of the Fittest ladder.  How could I hope to find my way home by the North Star, much less scavenge for food or shelter, with my handicapped vision?  Surely, I would be one of the first to succumb to the complete devastation of my environment. Since my family had neither means nor imagination, we had no bomb shelter. Mom and Dad wouldn't even consider it. Apparently, I realized with a sinking heart, they had no sense of imminent disaster. It was up to me to save myself.

So I trained myself to see in the dark. I became adept at counting steps to and from important places, like the bathroom.  I used my feet in the yard at night, to identify my path in the dark. God forbid my feet found a stick, because if it was a snake I would never be able to tell.  I would just have to assume the worst, and act accordingly, I resolved.  I learned to navigate the cupboards by touch, eyes closed.  At the same time, I was influenced by reading some highly simplified tracts on life in Ancient Greece/ Sparta, and developed a passion for living like a Spartan.  Those of you who have seen the movie, The 300, will know whereof I speak when I say that Spartans were trained to survive physical ordeals and deprivation.  What better way to survive Armagedon than living by my highly trained senses and with only minimal requirements? I had a plan, and plans make us feel like we have control.  Life went on.


Decades later, I found Lasik eye surgery, and couldn't believe my luck. Finally, a way to beat my Darwinian handicap!  I had the surgery, and indeed for a decade I was free, free! I could handle any kind of invasion, subterfuge, wilderness survival trek with just me and my wits; the vision would carry me home, and no one could take it away from me!

Alas.  Just like misplaced blind trust in my brother, there was a catch in the plan. Lasik surgery did not over-rule the natural ageing process of vision.  I lost my distance vision, then my middle vision, over the course of a few years.  Right now, I'm about back to 3rd grade level.  But the old training has stayed with me.  I can still feel my way around the kitchen, the neighborhood sidewalks of my little burg, the knobs and dials on the radio, count the steps up and down to my abode's ins and outs. I Will Survive, thanks to my long-ago training.  Old Age is in fact a more worthy opponent than the Commies, any day.

As a bonus, I have learned to not take too seriously national threats, and have gained a lot more insight into eyeglass fashion.


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