{"id":401,"date":"2008-11-03T20:28:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T02:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=401"},"modified":"2008-11-03T20:28:53","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T02:28:53","slug":"world-without-my-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2008\/20081103-401.htm","title":{"rendered":"World Without My Glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really need my glasses around the house.  Not when I&#8217;m at the computer or reading or puttering.  I only need them for my distance vision.  So I didn&#8217;t have them on when I left for class at 4.  By the time I realized I had forgotten them, it was too late to turn back.  Welcome to a whole new world.<\/p>\n<p>It was odd, asking a question of a blob on a television screen.  It&#8217;s always odd doing the teleconferencing thing&#8211;but not being able to see makes it even more unusual.  Navigating rush hour traffic on two of North Lincoln&#8217;s busiest streets was also interesting.  I could feel the tiny muscles in my eyes straining to focus.<\/p>\n<p>The library was an adventure.  I couldn&#8217;t scan the stacks like I usually do&#8211;or my head would start spinning with blurry blocks of text.  Instead, I had to kneel so that my head was level with whatever shelf I was looking at&#8211;so that my eyes could focus on the spines of the books directly in front of me.<\/p>\n<p>I dropped by my parent&#8217;s house to ask my brother John about his day at the College of Business Administration&#8217;s &#8220;Big Red Welcome.&#8221;  I asked him, teasing, if they had convinced him to join the Business College.  He replied, quite seriously, that he thinks they have.  I&#8217;m excited for him&#8211;I think he&#8217;ll do great in business.  He&#8217;s smart, he&#8217;s a people person, he&#8217;s a go-getter.  It&#8217;s just that he&#8217;s really growing up.  Tomorrow he&#8217;ll vote in his first ever election&#8211;helping to make a decision that&#8217;ll shape the destiny of our nation.<\/p>\n<p>I sat down for some pumpkin pie (made by my brother Daniel and his girlfriend Debbie) and my sister Grace began a lament about her civics class.  The teacher has switched her teaching style and Grace prefers the old one&#8211;in fact, she&#8217;s pretty much sure that the old way is the only way she (Grace) can learn.  I listened and thought, &#8220;External locus of control.&#8221;  Then I thought, &#8220;You&#8217;re a nerd.&#8221;  Then I realized that Gracie is growing up.  She&#8217;s in high school now&#8211;the place where grades start counting.  She&#8217;s learning our governmental system.  She&#8217;s learning how to learn on her own (somewhat unwillingly, but oh well.)<\/p>\n<p>The phone rang and we ignored it.  The phone wasn&#8217;t in its holster anyway.  But Joshua bounded up the stairs with the phone to announce a call for Timothy.  It was the army recruiter.  Tim jumped up and paced towards the school room (soon the piano room)&#8211;and then changed his mind and went the opposite direction, into his bedroom.  He&#8217;s pretty serious about this thing.  He&#8217;s researched his options.  He&#8217;s looked into schools.  He&#8217;s gone over costs and benefits.  He&#8217;s considered the risks of war.  He&#8217;s looked into genetic engineering in the military.  He&#8217;s on the cusp of making his decision.  If he decides to join the Army Reserves, he&#8217;ll be heading to boot camp next summer.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like just yesterday, they were this:<br \/>\n<img src=\"images\/20081103-1.jpg\" alt=\"Tim and Grace as children\" \/><br \/>\nand now&#8211;he&#8217;s talking of joining the military.<\/p>\n<p>I take off my glasses for just a day and the world swirls by, leaving me with a foreign landscape.  What happened to yesterday?  Where&#8217;d it go?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know&#8211;and I can&#8217;t waste time trying to figure it out&#8211;I&#8217;d only end up losing today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really need my glasses around the house. Not when I&#8217;m at the computer or reading or puttering. I only need them for my distance vision. So I didn&#8217;t have them on when I left for class at 4. By the time I realized I had forgotten them, it was too late to turn &#8230; <a title=\"World Without My Glasses\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2008\/20081103-401.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">World Without My Glasses<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[6,21],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}