Perception

I think it was early-1960s, Grade 3 or 4, when my teacher took the class into the hall. She had us line up and, one by one, we had someone test our eyesight. You know the charts – “Please read from the top line…” Yeah, well I ‘failed’ that test. And, ever since then, I’ve had to wear corrective lenses for distance seeing.

Glasses are a pain. Here and now, I recommend to all my readers that you never have to wear lenses. (NB – I haven’t seen, nor heard of the notation ‘NB’ used since my early school days – anyway, take note that I did not recommend that you not wear them should you need them, I merely recommend that you don’t need them. Yeah, I know, as if we have a choice.)

Requiring corrective lenses alters one’s perception. Without them, things in the distance become fuzzy to me, not sharp and delineated. But that’s not what I mean. Requiring lenses means that my perception of the world changed. I couldn’t, for example, just jump into a lake like the other boys. First I’d have to find a safe place to put my glasses, then remember where it was so I could retrieve them after coming out. This also meant that I would have to come out basically where I went in – or at least return to that spot.

Glasses changed the level of spontaneity. One couldn’t just go home and say, “Hi, Dad, lost my glasses again. Could you pick up a new pair for me on your way home from work tomorrow?” Glasses cost money, and money wasn’t something in plentiful supply. Thus one didn’t do things that might cause the glasses to be broken or lost.

On top of that, glasses changed my perception of myself. Wearing glasses back in the mid-1960s wasn’t ‘cool’. I think that has somewhat changed in the last 50 years, but I’m not sure, as I don’t have a plethora of glasses-wearing 8-year-old friends. Actually, I don’t have any 8-year-old friends, but that’s beside the point. Let us just say that I’m no longer in the loop.

It took some years for me to become comfortable with wearing glasses. It no longer bothers me at all, but then again, more and more of my contemporaries are beginning to join me as they age.

On top of the myopia, I’m sensitive to light. A bright summer’s day means I have to wear tinted lenses as well, else suffer headaches. This, of course, changes my perception about what is a ‘nice day’. A nice day, to me, has quite a bit of cloud cover, if not overcast.

While I’m at it, I’ll admit that I like fog. The possibility exists that I like it because it reduces everyone else to my state. No one, not even those with the most acute vision can read a licence plate 30 metres away in a dense fog – and nor can I without corrective lenses on a fine day.

For all of us, perceptions change with circumstance. Mine (and others of my ilk) just experience it more sharply. Glasses on: all okay; glasses off: possible danger – especially when driving at night. Sunglasses on: all is fine, it’s a nice day; sunglasses off: headache on the way, it’s a lousy day.

These are things that only the empathetic can see. Until I wore glasses, I stood with the majority. The next day, I found myself in a minority, and my perception of everything changed (though my vision did not).

In the earlier years of movies and television, the producers relied on conventions to give hints to audiences. In westerns, if a man wore a white hat, we perceived him as the ‘good guy’. If he wore a black hat, the bad guy. If he wore all black he was the obvious villain. Then came Paladin (Have Gun, Will Travel). He wore black, but was the putative ‘good guy’, though really a gun-for-hire, a mercenary. And we were forced to change our perception – our eyes ‘lied’ to us. They told us that Paladin was the bad guy, while his actions told us differently.

War movies from that era told us that the Germans and the Japanese were the bad guys – most often murderers without morals, most often stereotypes. Then came “The Enemy Below”, where the German U-Boat commander was treated as sympathetically as the American Destroyer commander who fought him.

Both the above came out in 1957. And perceptions changed.

One of the great things about books – either writing them or reading them – is that they can give you alternative perspectives on life or at least aspects of it. You can see from the point of view of someone of the opposite sex – or someone entirely alien, though the aliens usually portray some aspect of humanity. A great thing about writing books is that – as author – you can play around with conventions, and make things not as they are perceived to be.

In my book Ghost Fleet, I decided to have no ‘villains’, though some might read it differently. All my characters, no matter on which side of the war they fought, or for what reasons, followed logical – for them – paths which coincidentally (I don’t believe in coincidence) put them in conflict with others. How can you hate the enemy when you understand and can empathize with him?

And now, I have just completed a new book, “A Throne At Stake” where I play with perception and convention a little more. It has taken me some time to get the book just where I want it, but I have succeeded at long last. I’m quite pleased with it – though I’m just one reader, and my perception of it may differ from all others. Nonetheless, I can now relax, take off my glasses, and bask in the good feeling of accomplishment.

So, it's off to bed for me, my trusty cat at my side ... on my back ... wherever he wants to be. I think he perceives me as furniture.