Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Ever see something and it reminds you of something, which reminds you of something else, which . . .

. . . And you look up and realize that thirty minutes have ticked by while you’ve been wandering the warrens of memory?

Yeah. That. I had one of those yesterday. But unlike most of these aimless treks through lost pathways, on this one I was able to retrace my steps and remember how I’d gotten from Point A to Point Z.

Step One

It started with a video of a kid, a young boy, who wanted to taste the Hershey’s Cocoa Powder. Now, it’s probably fair to say that most of us, at some point, were that kid. Probably every kid who has a parent who bakes has been suckered in by the big white letters that say “HERSHEY’S” on the dark brown box, the icon of chocolaty sweetness, and we’ve all learned the lie that chocolatiers have been hiding from us for centuries, i.e., that chocolate is not a thing of sweetness, at least not until you add a s**t-ton of sugar. And so, with a large helping of Schadenfreude, we watch as this kid’s mother hands her son the box and a spoon and films the totally expected result.

Spoonful goes in mouth. Gaze goes out to the middle distance. Brow furrows in consternation. The box, with its iconic lettering, is inspected. The first cough, and the kid becomes a cocoa-breathing dragon.

It’s frakking hilarious, but only because we’ve been there and we know that no physical harm was done (though the emotional scars last a lifetime, amirite?)

Step Two

Naturally, this got me to thinking of the day that I tried cocoa powder for myself. I did it on the sly—Mom told me not to, though not why. I clambered up onto the counter so I could get into the spice cupboard, pulled down the oblong tin, prized open the round manhole cover on top. I smelled it; it was dry, dusty, but definitely chocolate.

Big spoonful.

I coughed for days.

Step Three

Which reminded me of the other time I wanted to taste something and my mother warned me off.

And yet, I persisted.

So she let me taste it: a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

A bit wary of my mother’s attitude, I sniffed it. It smelled like angels riding unicorns across a rainbow and it absolutely, positively had to taste even better than that. This was going to be epic!

And it was indeed epic, only not in a good way. It was acrid, nasty, bitter, harsh, and my six-year old brain could only reel and repeat one question over and over: How can this be?

Step Four

About a year later, I ate something else I shouldn’t have. Now, to understand this fully, you need context. I’ve had bad vision since for-frakking-ever. Most kids sit close to the television because they’re so immersed in the experience; I sat a foot from the screen because it was the only way I could see what was happening.

“Don’t sit so close to the TV! You’ll ruin your eyes!”

Sorry. Too late.

I didn’t get glasses until I was nine, but I needed them much earlier. Trees were fuzzy blobs. People were upright groups of limbs and colors arranged in a discernible human-shaped pattern. It was only when things got within three feet that I could begin to make out the details, see faces, read letters.

With that as preamble, picture me now as a seven-year-old kid walking into the kitchen when I notice a miniature marshmallow sitting all by its lonesome on the kitchen table. We had them in the pantry—Mom would float a couple on my (properly hydrated and sweetened) hot cocoa on Sunday mornings—so spying a lone mini-marshmallow on the kitchen table was not that unusual. I mean, it wasn’t like manna from heaven or anything. It was explainable.

Being seven years old, a growing boy, capable of eating my weight in a single sitting, I snatched it up, popped it in my mouth, and bit down.

It crunched. It was not a marshmallow.

It was a piece of chalk.

But my first reaction was not “Cripes, that’s a piece of chalk!” No, my first reaction was, “Damn, that is one stale marshmallow!” Another chomp brought out the flavor of chalk dust with the memory of screeching blackboards and the clouds brought into being by clapped erasers. Now I really needed a glass of water.

In my defense, we didn’t have a blackboard, so why o why was there a piece of chalk on the kitchen table, a tiny nub of chalk, the exact size and color of a miniature marshmallow? Who would do such a thing?

It was my sister, who’d been outside drawing hopscotch cruciforms on the sidewalk and left it behind in the kitchen. I’ve since forgiven her, but it took a while.

Step Five

Reminded now of my childhood struggle with myopia, complete with attendant flashbacks of bullying by bigger boys (the fact that I read books and played the violin didn’t help; I was a walking stereotype), my brain leap-frogged to an incident that garnered me a ton of angst.

In grammar school, I was the kid picked last for team sports, and to be fair, I sucked at nearly everything sporty. If it had a big ball and clear, close boundaries, I did OK (as in four-square) but if there was any distance involved, or if the ball was smaller than my head, I was at a distinct disadvantage, and so when it came time to choose up sides, I was one of the last kids standing against the wall, me and Danny, the kid with polio braces on his legs, last to be picked for teams.

In the third grade the teachers introduced us to softball. Though I understood the theory, my performance in practice was (as you can imagine) somewhat lacking. One of the bully-boys would stand a long ways away and throw a smallish white ball (much smaller than my head), and I was supposed to hit it with a narrow stick. For a long while, this was all I knew about the game, because it’s all the farther I got. Stand up at the plate, swing the ghostly bat three times at the pale phantom arcing toward me, and sit down again.

One day, though, I connected. I swung the bat and felt the jolt of impact. The phantom ball flew away—immediately lost from my sight—and I remembered what I should do next: Run.

I turned toward where I thought first base would be and ran.

Except I couldn’t see first base.

There were boys —fuzzy, humanoid shapes with arms waving—all around, all yelling, at me, at someone, at each other. “Here!” “Run!” “I’ve got it!”

I ended up getting tagged out somewhere near second base, never having actually reached first base at all.

Thus endeth my burgeoning baseball career.

I got glasses the following year. I remember seeing leaves on the trees, reading signs at a distance.

I could recognize people from across the street.

I could watch television from across the room!

Step Six

Which naturally got me thinking about cataracts. Recently, a pen-pal’s husband had surgery to fix his cataracts (when the lens in the eye gets cloudy and eventually becomes opaque). My father had cataract surgery. So has my sister. So have several other folks I know.

But none of them ever mentioned the secret benefit of the procedure. Not until my pen-pal let it slip and told me of her husband’s procedure, of how well it went, and of how now he no longer needs the glasses he’s worn since the age of three.

WTF?

I looked it up and it’s true. Cataract surgery can correct hyperopia, myopia, astigmatism and even presbyopia. Why isn’t this shouted from rooftops around the globe? Sign me up!

Naturally, there’s a downside. It turns out that myopes like me have something you lot don’t: I can see things clearly very close to my eye. And I mean very close, like three inches away. This ability—which up until yesterday I thought everyone possessed—has made it easy for me to enjoy hobbies like repairing old pocket watches and painting miniature game figurines.

Eventually I will need cataract surgery. My optometrist says I’m already showing some cloudiness in my eyes (and no, “Totally normal for your age” does not make it easier to swallow), so it’s a-comin’. Will I be happier at having, for the first time ever, normal vision? Or will I be too saddened by the loss of my ultra-close vision?

I’m not sure. The ability to wake up in the morning and see clearly, without corrective lenses, will be a boon, but there are times when I actually like a fuzzed-up world. Without glasses, I live in an Impressionist landscape, and losing that (along with my up-close vision) will be a big change.

And with that, I’ll get back to my day and wish you well in yours.

k