I have always had trouble with my eyes. In school up to the ninth grade, everything only a short distance away looked fuzzy. For instance, trees sometimes looked like green fuzz balls. In school, I would take my notebook up to the blackboard to write down the next day's assignment. The teaches didn't pay any attention until junior high school.

That was when a police officer came to our door asking for Dad. He had a warrant for Dad's arrest if Dad refused to get me eye glasses. Dad was furious. "How dare they try to tell him how to run his family!" he shouted. However, he did relent and had my eyes examined. His were, too. Both of us needed glasses. I, also, had an astigmatism. My eyes didn't line up correctly, so i saw double. If I held a hand a short distance from my face, I saw a sea of fingers. The doctor had me come to his office and look into a machine. I was to line up two red dots over a white one. I never could do it. I wore glasses from that time on. I think I was about 12.

In my fifties, I had all kinds of trouble with my right eye: vitreous haemorrhage and detached retina (twice.) My right eyeball wouldn't hold its shape so surgery for a scleral buckle was called for. A few years later, a bad fall caused another detached retina. Poor, poor right eye.

Everything limped along until my early nineties. Suddenly, my vision dimmed. The eye doctor said i had a scar on the retina of my left eye, my good eye. There was no cure. The left eye would follow suit eventually. It is called "Macular Degeneration."

There is a sort of upside to all of this. I qualify for library books from the State of Tennessee Library for the Blind. They come through the mail in a special cloth envelope. I just reverse the address card and mail them back after reading them. No charge

I, also, have three pairs of eye glasses to keep track of. One has bifocals for general seeing. One is for reading and last one is for computer use. I now use number 14 font on the computer. Even with all this help my eyesight is quickly degenerating. It is a problem I will have to live with the rest of my life.