Vision Loss

Whether by accidental stabbing or by pure fate, these historical icons – real and fictional – have carved themselves a permanent place in traditional and pop culture.

Stevie Wonder – 34 Top Ten hits, 22 Grammys, five words (”Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”). The most popular and possible explanation for his blindness is the excessive amount of oxygen that was pumped into his incubator as a premature infant, which led to retinoplasty of prematurity.

Louis Braille - A bit of an obvious choice, but the way the namesake of the “language of the blind” lost his sight is pretty gruesome. As a child, he poked himself in the eye with a sharp tool used to poke holes in leather; his eyes became infected and blindness ensued. However, he ended up creating the system of communication for millions of blind people. He even had an asteroid named after him.

Portrait of Louis Braille

Geordi LaForge was born blind, but his high-tech VISOR (Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement) provides a sense of sight. Rumor has it that, in addition to a knack for spaceship engineering, he’s also a huge fan of children’s books.

Cupid – Often depicted as blind or blindfolded, this cherubic deity’s lack of sight purportedly translates to blindness to a lover’s faults. It also explains the Liza Minelli – David Gest fiasco.

Which came first – The glasses or the nerd?

The scenario occurred frequently in my youth. There I would be, nestled in a comfortable corner, immersed in a book. The hours would slip away, completely unnoticed as I turned over page after page, until the sun had sunk low over the houses across the street. At this point, like clockwork, my stepmother would wander through the room and, for the first time in several hours, take notice of me.

“For the last time, will you turn on a light!” she would shout, jostling me back to reality. “If you keep reading in the dark like that, you’re going to need glasses!”

For the record, I still have 20/20 vision, despite the fact that I stubbornly continued to read in any light that was adequate to allow me to distinguish one character from the next.

The whole excessive-reading-leads-to-nearsightedness nonsense is a product of a basic misunderstanding of how the eye works. Myopia, or nearsightedness, is caused by a shape discrepancy between the cornea and the eyeball. People are either born with the genetic predisposition to myopia or they are not.

What reading in dim light might cause is eye strain, which can result in soreness around the eyes, headaches, or drowsiness. This is because the muscles that control the eye’s movements and ability to focus are being worked harder than normal. Just like any other muscle, they will be sore after exercise. A little rest will have them back to normal, if not stronger for the workout.

Besides, I’d much rather be well-read and nearsighted than have perfect vision and the intelligence of a fruit fly. But that’s just me.