The Garden of the Blind

Today, for the first time in about 20 years, I went to an optometrist. After a battery of tests (which apparently I did better than I should have on) and some fine measurement of my eyes using that big apparatus with all the lenses (apparently it's called a phoropter), and then some exercises where I would tilt my head and look at an object with one eye at a time, it was determined that I have very unusual eyes.

It turns out that I have 20/20 vision in one eye, but it sees farther best, and the other eye is quite near sighted (my prescription would apparently be -1.75, whatever that means). The two eyes operate independently, meaning that typically only one of them is dominant at any given time. They also don't point the same direction (observant acquaintances of mine already know this), which is apparently related to the fact that my left eyelid is droopy.

One consequence of this (that occurred to me after the appointment) is that it means that I don't have binocular vision. This could explain a lot of things, like the difficulty I have seeing magic eye puzzles or my awkwardness around sports equipment.

There are three options for me. I could get surgery to correct the misalignment of my eyes, I could get glasses to correct the vision in my right eye, or I could do nothing and enjoy having natural bifocals. I think that I'll do the third thing for now and enjoy my bifocular vision.