'Shenkin Glasses': Real and political dyslexia

Back in 2005 I finally admitted to myself that I hadn't been able to read small print for several years.  It had happened so gradually that I hadn't felt compelled to act... but when I couldn't read the instructions for one of the kid's electronic gadgets I finally threw in the towel and picked up a set of cheap, off-the-shelf reading glasses.

I have also mentioned on several occasions that I have lived most of my life with mild dyslexia which has made reading of any sort a chore.

Anyway, the drug-store reading glasses weren't much of a success.  Sure, they allowed me to see the small print again, but they also seemed to oddly intensify my dyslexia and even gave me headaches after long reading sessions.  The result was that I pretty much gave up reading for pleasure and only hauled out the reading glasses when I absolutely had to decipher something small.

A few months ago I finally decided to bite the bullet and get prescription reading glasses.

Now every eye exam I've ever had has lasted no more than 10 minutes, and has gone pretty much like this:

"Read this line... read that line... cover your left ye... now your right... don't mind these drops (although they might make you look like a junkie for a an hour or so)... put your chin right here... just a little puff of air... nope, no glaucoma here... sorry, no pot for you (ha ha)... OK, we're done.  You have healthy eyes... but you'll probably need reading glasses in a few years... but no more than a prescription of .75 or 1.00... have a nice day."

So this time when I went to a friend / neighbor's optometry practice in Jerusalem to be tested I was expecting more of the same.  I was shocked by the thoroughness of the exam as well the array of tools and tests that were employed.  The whole exam took almost an hour!

When we were almost done my friend sat down across from me and handed me a page of text and asked me to read it to myself while he watched my eyes closely.  When I finished he asked me if I had ever had problems with dyslexia or other difficulties reading.

I was a little shocked at the question and answered in the affirmative... giving him the full run-down on my difficulties in school and how I found reading to be a cumbersome and exhausting activity.  But at the end of my description I asked him what my dyslexia had to do with my eyes since it was a mental problem.

He smiled knowingly and said, "Is that so?  Here, let's try something."

With that, he popped a couple of lenses into the enormous 'monster glasses' he had used while testing my eyes and handed me the page of text again.

I nearly fell off the chair as my eyes raced effortlessly down the lines of text.  Instead of wrestling with each word and plodding through a sticky quagmire of individual letters I was suddenly seeing whole words flash by in crisp, obvious sequence.

I put down the page and stared at him.

I must have had a pretty comical expression on my face because he laughed out loud.  He told me that my problem with reading and dyslexia wasn't mental, but rather was caused by my eyes not being able to perfectly align and focus on the same point in space.   Not only that... he said it was not at all uncommon.

He explained that when looking at things in the distance, perfect eye alignment isn't crucial since the dominant and non-dominant eye can pass their respective images to the brain without much perceived shift in the picture you see.  But when focusing on something like a page of printed text a few inches in front of one's face, this struggle between the eyes for dominance and the misalignment of the focal point becomes much more noticeable and can wreak havoc with the final image the brain wants to 'show' you.

He confirmed what other optometrists had told me; that my eyes were quite healthy and that I only needed a mild prescription for reading.  But he said that he wanted to put a prism in one lens to bring my left eye into better alignment with my right for reading.  I eagerly agreed and walked out of his office walking ten feet off the ground (and not because of the drops)!

Now came the daunting task of selecting frames. 

I hadn't liked anything in the display case in his office so I promised him I would find a set of frames elsewhere and bring them to him so he could have my lenses ground. 

The problem was that for anyone just starting to wear glasses in middle age, pretty much all glasses look odd in the mirror.  I didn't want anything too big.... but most of the smaller frames sat too high on my nose and forced me to either rest my chin on my chest to look through them (while holding a book in a typical reading posture)... or to lift the reading material to an uncomfortable level in front of my face. 

Someone suggested 'half-lenses' (granny glasses), but I rejected those out of hand.  It's bad enough being 45... I didn't want to add 15 or 20 years to my appearance overnight.  So the search continued.

Finally I wandered into a trendy eye-glass emporium in the German Colony and noticed a set of small frames on display.  They were fairly simple... perfectly round... wire frames.  The nice thing was that the bridge was fairly wide which allowed them to sit relatively low  This allowed my eyes to look directly through them at an object held out in a comfortable reading position in front of me and a few inches below my chin.

Just my luck, the frames were made by a trendy designer (Jacob Jensen) and would normally have required a small mortgage to purchase.  But the shop owner told me that almost everyone wanted the color-tinted versions and that if I wanted the display pair (a simple bronze tone set) he would give them to me for a very reasonable price.  We 'haandeled' a bit and arrived at a price we could both live with and I walked out with my new frames.

 

On the way home, however, I realized that Zahava would almost certainly hate them (yes folks, I bravely/stupidly picked them out without her).  Zahava had been pushing for me to get a pair of larger rectangular frames... and she had rejected out-of-hand any of the less-obtrusive models I had tried on for her in the past.

When I walked into the house with my new frames on, the first thing my lovely wife said to me was, "Hey, look who's here... it's Yoko Ono!"  It just went downhill from there.

Anyway, I stood my ground and gave the frames to my optometrist friend to have the prescription ground, and eagerly awaited their return.

I got them back just before I left for my India trip and was delighted to find that I could now read so fast that my brain seemed to be literally struggling to keep up with this new, unexpected rush of information.  Even though it was an overnight flight to India, I stayed up and read the entire way.  I read every evening in my hotel, and I read on every flight within India.... as well as on the flight home. 

It was such a wonderful and liberating experience to be able to effortlessly read that at first I didn't take much notice of the comments I got. 

The Indian's with whom I met unanimously loved the glasses as they thought they looked like those favored by the late Mahatma Ghandi.  But the real eye-opener was the reaction I got from my coworkers when I returned to Israel.  A few people confused me by asking me if I had 'switched sides'.  Another person jokingly asked if I had moved out of the 'shtahim' (territories).  Still another asked rather bluntly when I had become such a 'lefty'.

But the asimon finally dropped when a young Tel Aviv resident I work with (the sort of woman who makes middle aged men involuntarily suck in their gut when she passes) sat down across from me at lunch one day and complimented me on my 'funkie Shenkin glasses'. 

For those outside the country, Shenkin is much more than the name of a well-known street in Tel Aviv.  It is the epicenter of a very specific liberal, sophisticated, ultra-hip Israeli mentality.  This pretty young woman had taken what I considered to be stodgy, old-world frames and plunked them down in the heart of Israel's premier café district.  Suddenly, all the previous comments I'd gotten made sense.

I don't think it is much of a secret to anyone living here in Israel that various religious and non-religious factions adhere to fairly specific 'uniforms'.  At a glance it is pretty easy to figure out if someone is religious/observant or not... and to what 'camp' they belong.  One look at the type of clothing and hair style (or type of hair covering) gives away pretty quickly to the casual observer where the person falls along the religious spectrum... not to mention on which side of the green line they probably reside.

To some extent, accessories are also a dead give-away as to an Israeli's political leanings. I accidentally found this out with my new frames... frames that seemed to be sending out confusing messages to the casual observer. 

Apparently my check shirts, kippah and pistol clashed with my 'Shenkin glasses'.  Who knew?

People, both at work and at play, suddenly didn't know quite how to pigeon-hole me.   Personally, I couldn't care less... I now have the incredible ability to read whatever and whenever I want.  If this means that others have a little trouble 'reading' me... I figure that's their problem.  :-)