Blind Luck ?

John Milton, the Elizabethan poet wrote a sonnet on his blindness. Blind Lemon Jefferson wrote blues about his. I'll blog about mine. Occasionally. I have Stargardt's disease - a form of macular degeneration that typically starts when one is relatively young. In my case, I was 18 when I learned something was definitely going on. At 16, my girlfriend, Kathy, and I tried dying the tennis balls black--they were beige then--because I was complaining that I couldn't see them well. Kathy's father, ironically, was an ophthalmologist. He gave me a physical exam for college and he discovered the problem. My maternal grandfather, Homer Simmons, used a white cane and all the time I knew him, he could only see shapes from the edges of his eyes. It apparently didn't hold him back; he planted 49 consecutive cotton crops. I am often asked what I can see. If I stared at your head, it would eventually disappear from my view and blend in with the background color. I have large blind spots in the centers of my eyes where the acute vision is located. The Moran Eye Center is a remarkable place. The family had genetic testing there. The gene lurks in some but not all of my offspring. But, what are you going to do? Like Milton, "When I consider how my light is spent..." before more than half my life is up, I rarely wonder why. And, it makes for some funny moments. More on that later.