Blind as a Bat

I've been wearing some kind of corrective lens since the second grade. I remember never thinking about my vision and then one day wondering why it was harder to read the chalkboard. When my family went to a performance of "Oklahoma," I sealed the deal for me going to the optometrist. I asked my mom, "Can you see the actor's faces?" I'll never forget the confusion on my mom's face (trying to decide if I was serious or getting restless). "Are you kidding?" she asked. I soon was learning the procedures for the annual visit I would be making for the rest of my life.
I'm basically blind as a bat. If I have taken out my contacts or have put my glasses down, I can't see anything in focus that is more than about 10 inches from my face. This makes it quite hilarious if I don't remember where I took my glasses off the previous night.
This is what I was doing this morning: peering over the top of the dresser and counter at less than a foot's range. I couldn't find them and wondered what I had done to lose them. Smartly, I pulled out the old pair and quickly discovered where my regular pair was hiding.
I figured that there wasn't much of a difference between the two sets and just left the old pair on. It didn't take long for that tiny difference to make a huge headache. If you aren't blessed with wearing glasses, you may not know that a small fraction of difference in your lens prescription can make it feel like the lenses are pulling at your eyes (I swear, there are eyeball magnets in the lenses!!). This "pull" can give you quite a headache.
Some day I want to have laser surgery done on my eyes. It'll be pretty awesome to have normal sight restored after so long, but I have to wait until we are finished having children (pregnancy screws with your eyesight and teeth). So, until then, I will continue to be blind as a bat and peer strangely at flat surfaces in the morning to find my glasses.