Branding

I have never been a fashion-conscious person. In high school, I found it downright mysterious that anyone would pay attention to a commercial label on a pair of pants or a shirt.

It was pretty easy for me to dismiss this as adolescent shallowness at the time, but then I got to college. Everyone (except me) seemed to be aware of who wore J. Crew and who wore Gap. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who I thought of and still think of as an intelligent, substance-oriented person, and he responded that while some labels mean nothing about the people who wear them, others do.

"If I see someone wearing Tommy Hilfiger, it means they want to come off as a certain type of person," he explained.

What type of person?

"You know, the type who wears Tommy Hilfiger."

Right.

What he was expressing was neither stupid nor shallow. Even mass-market fashion serves as a form of expression, broad and unspecific as it might be, and it's a language people use to communicate before ever speaking a word to each other. If you heard last weekend's This This American Life, you know about a great example that involved acid-wash jeans. Of course, that turned out to be a communication that neither party understood, but that's life.

Even people who don't specifically look at the label -- and, again, I am physically incapable of doing so without putting my nose up to some one's sleeve -- still take a message from the style and cut of the clothing. Had someone trained me, or had I trained myself to do this when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't be at too much of a disadvantage now.

At the same time, I'm a little proud to be out of the fashion game. Well, not entirely -- I do put a little thought into what I wear -- but cheap and comfortable are ideal for me, and no one seems to complain. I may be contributing to slave labor by buying cheap, but that's an entirely different issue.

Full disclosure: I do own two paris of Tommy Hilfiger bedsheets. They were given to me. I happen to like them because they're comfortable. If this communicates anything about me, I do not need to know it.

Boring is Good

I went in for my annual eye check-up today, and my eye doctor chastised me for being boring.

"You're not giving me much to do here," he scolded.

My eyes haven't changed since last year, the year before, or the year before that. Even my light prescription is still the same -- and I only wear glasses in movie theaters.

Back when I was twelve, a specialist in Boston told me that my vision would not change for most of my life. In other words, I can expect not to expect anything new.

Medical science gets headlines when they discover cures or new diseases, but rarely for the ability to predict that nothing will happen. I, for one, am glad to make no headlines today.

Whoops

Last night was great. Staged reading of my ten-minute play, It Glows, the touching saga of two hapless slackers and the mysterious box that landed in front of their garage door.

This was part of a staged reading series which involved a bunch of other plays, and there were six actors who played all the parts in the evening. All I had to do afterward was thank the actors who were in mine.

One of the actors was tall and had facial hair. Easy. I spotted him as soon as I got to the front of the theater space. We had a great mutual admiration session, and then I went looking for other people to thank.

The other actor approached me. Unfortunately, I did not know who he was. Despite that I had just watched him play three parts, I did not know what his face looked like. Whoops.

We talked for a while, and I think I masked my confusion pretty well. Only later, when it was obvious to me who he was -- this was a separate conversation, in another part of the room -- did I casually play it off as, "Hey, man, we should stay in touch. You were great." Had I been in his shoes, this would have at least seemed odd.

It's times like that when I briefly think about disclosing -- which, by the way, I do when I can in casual situations, but hadn't had the chance to do here -- but I just didn't have it in me last night. I was riding the high of having just kept an audience in hysterics for eleven minutes. I didn't really want to pull out the blind card.

Like I said, it was a great night, and even that annoying incident didn't change that. I went out for drinks with the director and a few people from the cast, and we had interesting talks about the economy and the bubbles people trap themselves in. My vision didn't come up once. I even managed to guess what beer they had on the menu. People kept giving me compliments on my writing all night.

Every now and then, I get a break from being "that guy," and it's good to know that it's out there.

Footpath Rage

I was walking through the farmer's market today when I heard a British voice behind me say, "For f***'s sake, come on!"

I stopped and asked the person who passed me if he was talking to me. His response:

"Walk in a straight line!"

He said this as he stomped away, so I quickly threw in, "I'm sorry sir, but this is a market, and people walk around." By that point, he was probably busy cursing someone else's back. There was a small part of me that wanted to inform him that his accent was crude and lower-class, but I refrained. It was probably enough for one of us to throw a childish tantrum.

Once, when someone asked me if I could drive, I joked, "Dude, I can't even walk straight." But unless I'm meandering aimlessly in a farmer's market, I don't think my footpath is much wavier than anyone else's. The odd thing about having a blind spot is that you're never entirely sure whether you're normal in any respect. But, then again, 20/20 vision doesn't seem to solve that either.

A Creative Solution

The FDA has approved a treatment for what I have. It's not something I'd want to pursue at this point, but that's the first time I can say anything remotely close to the previous sentence, which is pretty damn cool.

My friend Andrew, who has the same condition, pointed me to the article (short and easy to read):

Implantable Telescope for the Eye

There are several reasons this isn't something I'd jump to get. First off, after about 19 years of having the exact same quirk in my vision (namely, a blind spot), I've gotten used to it. I can't really imagine what it would be like to see big things in one eye and the whole picture in the other. I already have spotty depth perception, and this probably would exacerbate the issue. I also can't imagine having to constantly switch from one eye to the other. Plus, there are the usual risks associated with any invasive surgery, especially one that involves as sensitive an organ as the eye.

I have the luxury of what is generally functional vision, so I have the choice. There are others with much worse cases of macular degeneration who could really benefit from this. And, hey, maybe I'll opt for it at some point. It's nice to know that it's out there at all, and that people are actually working on fixing this.