Eye Check

Tonight I went to the opthamologist to have my retinas checked. A couple of years ago, I experienced a small tear and he repaired with a laser. So periodically, he checks the insides of my eyeballs to make sure that the patch is holding and that there aren't any other weak or failing spots. This is just one of those fantastic parts of aging--having the gel in your eyeballs begin to liquefy and start to splash down into big blobs that float around making shadows in your vision. Also, it can pull at the retina, causing tearing. One more thing to look forward to, young'ens!

As we drove over to the eye doctor (CoolGuy took me because of the need to dilate my pupils in order to look -- actually-- into my eyes.) As we traveled over to the office, we could see the dark clouds that were rapidly moving our direction, and then the radio program was interrupted by the weather service announcing the high winds, thunderstorms and lightning that was part of a fast moving storm rushing across the valley. We watched as three jets from the Air Force base landed at the city airport, because the storm was so severe at the base that, apparently, they had to be diverted. The palm trees along Flamingo Road were whipping back and forth from the powerful wind, and raindrops were starting to beat on our windshield as we pulled into the parking lot of the medical center. 

When we came out about 60 minutes later, the streets had become streams. Every gutter ran full, with choppy waves. It was easy to find the lowest places on the roads as we drove home, because that was where a huge lake stretched across the pavement. We could see that the storm had moved on to the extreme southern end of the valley. But right over us, the sunlight streamed across the cars from the edge of the mountains where Old Sol was about to set. This resulted in a massive and shimmering rainbow with one end ironically ending on top of a Boulder Highway casino.

However, in the very center of this rainbow, lightning still slashed jaggedly over the mountain near our house. We drove through the sunlit streets, dodging huge puddles, admiring the rainbow, bemused by the lightning, and astonished at the drifts of sand, gravel and palm branches that were piled up along the streets, here and there. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees in one hour. When it rains in Vegas, Baby, it's quite a show!

As we drove home, I told CoolGuy the good news from the eye doctor--everything looked good and, unless there were any new alarming symptoms, I didn't need to return for a year. I related to CoolGuy an amusing conversation I'd had with some students today. We were thinking of something we'd done, about which we could write a personal narrative. One technique is to think of a place, then write a list of things you've done there. Then from this list choose one event and write a story. One of my places was "barn" and several students asked if I had a barn at my house. I said that it was the barn from when I was a child. Then, I said that I had one advantage over them----they were only 10 years old, and I was 60 years old, so I had fifty more years of stories to tell than they had.

The girls at one table expressed their amazement at my age. "REALLY?? You're 60? You look like you're twenty!" I thought "Ha! Ha! Ha!" But I said, "Thanks" and then as I walked away, I thought, "Hmm...maybe I should load all of you up and take you to my eye doctor tonight after school!"  I know I don't feel as old as my birth certificate certifies that I am, but I'm pretty sure that I also don't look twenty. I appreciate their votes of enthusiasm! Does my excitement over a beautiful rainbow count as young at heart?