I suffer from a very specific type of glaucoma. It permits me to see that the women I know are beautiful women. If I don’t know the woman, the glaucoma enshrouds the woman in a blur. Now this condition appears in an inconsistent manner. Wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, nieces uniformly appear as glowingly beautiful people. The glow similarly engulfs all the good and decent women I’ve met through the decades.
This morning, while eating breakfast in a Comfort Inn, a woman and a teen-aged boy sat at the next table. If I was a reporter, my editor would try to fire me for not being able to provide a single identifying detail about the woman. But, s/he would fail because I’ve thoroughly documented my glaucoma induced blurriness as an occupational disability. Besides, it is a life threatening condition. Without it, going to sleep would be a perilous endeavor. Eyes popping out of my head at an inappropriate moment during the day might cause the wife to bring a stiletto to bed that night.
So, the room’s television was set to a political commentary station. My wife and I had been in the room long enough to have heard 140Characters make his appeal for black voter support as we awaited an open table. I was mentally composing my response to appear here. Believe me, no really believe me, I had sparkling responses to cover each point.
I guess the political commentary networks work similarly to ESPN Sports Center because the same clip aired. Now, I’m studiously avoiding looking at the blurred woman even though she was less than 10 feet away. I find looking at him less offensive than hearing him so I sought refuge by craning my neck upward at the TV screen. Although, I wish my glaucoma didn’t add an orange tint to 140Characters.
For the second time this morning, I heard him speak these words:
“What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?” he asked. “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
I remained impassive. Another rebuttal came to mind. As I started to sharpen this blog posting, a single word penetrated.
“More.”
Lowering my eyes, the blur had disappeared.
She continued, “He scares me. I’m afraid he is going to blow up the world.”
Sitting across from me was a beautiful human being in the only way that truly matters. “More” succinctly answers 140Characters. Empathy for others was embedded in her continuation. A cynic might make the case she might have been presumptuous in presuming I didn’t agree with him. The analyst in me says she had a 98% or better probability of being right and the cynic was being presumptuous in ignoring the innate beauty of the woman.
She was a glowingly beautiful human being and I don’t have to worry about falling asleep tonight. No name, in a couple of days it will be a 98% chance that I wouldn’t recognize her, but the number of beautiful women in my life has increased by one.