The elevator was nearly full by the time it reached the ground floor. As Lyle and I stepped out, I heard a man behind me say, “At our age, I think that all of us are going a bit blind.”
Say what! What did he mean by “at our age”? Did he mean people in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s or 80’s? I wondered if I fell into his particular age demographic. I turned my head to see if I could guess at the stranger’s age, but he was already walking off in the other direction.
Also, what did he mean by going “a bit blind”? I wondered if I fit into his particular definition of blindness. Did he mean blind as to not being able to see print? Perhaps he meant not being able to drive at night, or even not being able to drive at all. I know that yesteryear’s definition of blindness has evolved from total darkness to the current version. We no longer think of being blind as not being able to see at all but rather a point on a curve from full sight to gradual degrees of vision loss. I wondered what the stranger’s version of vision was when he spoke of being “a bit blind”.
In this instance, the stranger’s comment on age and blindness was random for me. I didn’t hear any part of the conversation that led up to his remark. Nor did I hear any discussion that followed it. It was just one of those out of the blue comments that gave me pause to think.
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