Gulfstream Beach, FL ~ 1993
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. -Erasmus
“I’m a flat-earther,” Jimmy said with a twinkle in his good eye. “But not like the conspiracy theorists or the crackpots online. Those guys are nuts,” he quickly added. Most of the students at the table, finished with their lunch, got up to leave. They’d heard this before.
“OK, but what does that have to do with your eye looking like that?” Melody said. “I don’t mean to be rude, I just couldn’t help but notice,”
“Everything looks flat to me, even if we do live on a big round rock in space. I’m a Cyclops.”
She blinked and cocked her head a bit. “A Cyclops? Like in Greek mythology? Weren’t those the man-eating monsters?” Although she’d heard he was a nice guy, she was starting to wonder if striking up a conversation was a good idea. She picked up her sandwich, beginning to doubt the wisdom of transferring to this tiny high school.
“True, but their defining feature was their singular eye. I’m blind in one eye, so I’m a Cyclops. That’s why it looks like that. Or, that’s why I look like this.” He laughed, half at himself, half due to nerves. His opening gambit wasn’t as successful as usual.
“Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” she asked.
He gave a crooked smile. “Well I like to keep it light if I can,” he said, “but I guess I’m just kinda weird.”
“Weird’s OK, I guess.” She forced a small smile. “Did you have an accident or something?”
“No, I was born this way. ‘Nothing we can do about it’ has been the mantra of every doctor since. I don’t mind much. The poor thing never got switched on in the womb, and now it tries to look wherever it wants, usually down and to the right. But I can still see pretty well, although I do have a huge blind spot when I’m driving. And it isn’t too hard to sneak up on me. Plus I’m terrible at anything involving hitting a small moving object with a stick or racket. I could prove it to you some time.”
She got up from the cafeteria table and gathered her tray. “Well, I gotta go. Sorry if I asked too many questions.”
“Hey, no problem at all. I don’t mind talking about it. Welcome to Gulfstream. I’ll keep an eye out for you,” he said, trying to keep a straight face.
“Ha. OK, thanks. See you around.”
Unlike Melody, most folks were hesitant to bring it up. Little kids never had a problem pointing out something looked amiss. But grownups and most teens were well trained by society to pretend nothing looked funny, even if they were always asking themselves “Does this guy have brain damage or what? Which eye do I look in?” But at a birthday party or over a glass of punch after church, a little one would often stop, stare a bit, turn her head a little sideways, and ask: “Why does your eye look like that?”
One of God’s gifts to most of us is two forward-facing eyes, approximately 2.5 inches apart. Having a redundant eye isn’t just in case you shoot one out with your Red Ryder. Two eyes, working together, render your view in glorious depth and multifaceted perspective. But for Jimmy and his fellow Cyclopses, the world is rendered flat as a new TV. If you’re born with one eye, or something happens to one early in life, your brain makes up for much of the lack with tricks using shadow, texture, and something called motion parallax. Still, there is no true depth perception without multiple perspectives.
~~~
Ruben James DeYoung was named after both his father (Ruben) and mother (Jamie), so please don’t call him Junior. If you knew him in high school or earlier, you were allowed to call him Jimmy. For a few years he transitioned to Jim, which he proudly chose and displayed on his name tag at his first real job at Kmart when he was 16. Once he started college, he was James. Despite his common Dutch surname (Americanized, thanks undoubtedly to a clerk at Ellis Island a few generations prior), he was born old. He entered the world at nearly 44 weeks gestation, back when they let you go that long. He was never small for his age.
He was half-blind, although that is a bit of a misnomer. In one sense, he could see just fine. Actually, he could usually see better than most folks in any given room, as the nerd who could read the copyright at the bottom of the eye chart. He never needed glasses, unless you count the safety the goggles he was forced to wear when he played high school basketball, just in case an errant elbow crashed into his good eye. During his junior year of high school he rode the bench on the J.V. squad of Gulfstream Christian School, one of the smallest schools in the county, even though he towered over nearly all of his teammates and opponents. He was forced to prove to everyone, including himself, that height is little advantage in basketball if you have no depth perception or peripheral vision, not to mention a severe case of what they once called White Man’s Disease. So his greatest contributions to the team that lone season included a technical foul for banging the bench when the other team was shooting a foul shot, having his beloved digital Walkman stolen from the locker room at the public school, throwing up in the bushes after too many sprints at practice, having various rebounds ripped from his scrawny arms as soon as he turned around, getting dunked on by a former classmate, and scoring exactly one point all season (which is not easy to do). All the shin splints and wind sprints were a colossal waste of precious teenage time, perhaps better used for catching fish, taking photos, or playing guitar. He was far too eager to please.
His left eye was his one portal to the world, with a blurry view of his nose in the bottom right corner. But poor Righty never saw anything, unless you count a poor ability to vaguely detect light and color. For quite a while he was oblivious to most of the ramifications of his situation, but as he grew older it became clear: he looked funny, and he saw funny.
In the 1970s at least, the doctors were right when they said nothing could be done. There’s still never been a successful eye transplant. Perhaps it is true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but the inverse is also true: you don’t know what you’re missing until someone shows you.
~~~
This is the first chapter of my novel “Half-Blind” which is being published on Substack serially. Subscribe to read on!