A Life of Double Vision: Ghost Images Hover Over Solid Images

Bonni Brodnick
ILLUMINATION
Published in
4 min readJan 25, 2022

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Photo by pasttofuture on Unsplash

What would my life be like without going through the “pirate” episode in the popsicle line at Maplewood pool when I was six-years old? (See Part I: “Seeing With Crossed Eyes: My World in Double Vision”)

Or foregoing after-school sports for after-school eye training (Wow, what an athlete!) to strengthen my eye muscles (See Part II: “Being the Weirdo Kid With Glasses (and an Eye Patch)” at age seven.

And I wouldn’t have seen Dr. Bass, the strabismus specialist to try and straighten my eye that turned in (See Part III: Are You Holding Up One Finger or Two?). These are the wondrous things of my youth that make me who I am today.

Today, the goal of every ophthalmologist or optician I continue to see is to merge two images. But it hasn’t worked. So the appointment usually ends with at least trying to make the two images look, if not merged, as if they are side by side. Finally, the doctor and I are satisfied, but it’s a weird niche to fall into: being satisfied with an eye appointment that really didn’t work.

Through the years, I’ve amassed a collection of eyeglasses from the 60s, 70s, 80s, on up to today.

This reminds me of a story: One summer, I worked at a jewelry store on Martha’s Vineyard, and this guy walked in with cay-RAZY glasses.

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Bonni Brodnick
ILLUMINATION

Writer. Creative. Thinker. Humorist. Author of "My Stroke in the Fast Lane" + "Pound Ridge Past." A proud Stroke Survivor. Visit me at bonnibrodnick.com