When I was younger I had a lazy eye. I know that’s not the first thing that someone normally says when they first meet, but I think that it’s a good conversation starter.
The first time that I realized I had a lazy eye is when I was about 5 years old. My mom told me that I wasn’t born with it, it just happened as I got older. But the story that I am told is that when I was a child I would sit really close to the television. My mother would always say, “Nikki, you’re sitting too close to the TV, move back some.” I would soon reply, “Mama I can’t see.” I of course didn’t know what the problem was, but all I know is that soon after that incident I was in the eye doctor being fitted for my first pair of glasses. There I was, 5 years old, getting my first pair of glasses and that’s when all the torture began. Within an hour of eye blinking and saying letters I had just learned in daycare a year or two before. When I got some of the letters wrong, when the doctor covered one eye, he would tell my mother that I was too old not to know my alphabets. When the truth was that I couldn’t see them.
“She’s only 5, what do you expect from her. What you need to be worried about is getting her eyes straight,” my mother yelled.
“Ma’am by the looks of it, your daughter will never see clearly out of her right eye.”
Now, correct me if I’m wrong but I thought a doctor was supposed to let the family down easy with bad news. He told my mother that, as if she had just hit the lottery. But to her he just said that from now on your child has just become the laughing-stock for all those other evil elementary kids. So, my mother put my new glasses on me and said, “Baby, I love you even more now that you have a special eye. So don’t let anyone tell you different.” I knew that something was wrong with my eye, but I didn’t see it as a big deal. That was until I got to middle school.
Middle school has to be the worst time for a child to be going through any physical challenges in their life. Most days consisted of questions about my eye. Questions like, “What’s wrong with your eye?” or “Are you cross-eyed?” Days of constant staring and finger-pointing it was almost like I was a walking museum and the admission was free. My life was a joke for a long time and I felt that it was time to change my “special eye.” By this time my family and I had moved to Maryland and the possibility of getting help for my eye was a great chance. After a double dose of anesthesia, talk about cartoons, gas masks, two hours of cutting, stitching, and sewing, and last I remember, saying my alphabets backwards, I came out a brand new person. Released from the only one thing that I thought kids at school could tease me about. But again, I was wrong, because after my surgery I had to go back to school with a bloody red eye. The doctor failed to tell my mother that I would have to wear a patch over my eye because it would take about three months before my eye fully healed from surgery. The week after my surgery I was able to go back to school. I was terrified to return to school because of the stares and finger-pointing that was awaiting me. My mom drove me to school that day so I didn’t have to deal with school bus drama. When we got out of the car, I stayed in, only out of fear of the other kids teasing me. My mom pulled me and forced me to walk through the doors. That walk felt like the longest walk of my life. Might as well been on death row. I walked in school and it was nothing but all stares, finger-pointing and giggles. I knew it, I knew that was going to happen. But I had already made up my mind that I was going to be the laughing-stock of my school. I’m to make this funny somehow. As I looked around at all the kids staring, I took off my patch, walked to every kid and showed them what they wanted to see. My bloody red eye.
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