It's not easy being near-sighted. We, the squinters of the world, have a lot of crap to put up with as a result of our parents passing on their defect, not to mention we have to keep from walking into walls.

I first found out I had to wear glasses when I was in 4th grade. I had these ugly, big, round, gold glasses that I was supposed to wear in class and at movies and other extreme distance stuff. I didn't. The following year my eyes were twice as bad.

This trend continued until 8th grade, when I finally convinced my parents to let me get contacts. I had to promise my parents that I would take care of them, or else they would be taken away. That kind of confused me; they weren't a pet of some sort, they were just pieces of plastic I threw out every two months.

Through high school, my eyes kept getting worse, even though I looked sexier in my contacts. The only real side effect I had from them was that my eyes were always blood shot, making me look like I was high or something. If you had a hunk of plastic put on and taken off your eye everyday, your eyes would get pretty damn red, too.

It was my senior year of high school, coincidently the same year I turned 18, that I found out that my eyes were bad enough (-8.50 or worse) so that I couldn't legally be drafted or become an astronaut. But I didn't mind that; I'm too tall to fit into a spacecraft, and I'm also what the army would call a large target. Not to mention I don't like killing.

Anyway, my eyes have gotten a bit worse since then, and now it's to the point where I can't read or see anything clearly without it being so close to my face that both eyes can't focus on it. Yes, I'm as blind as a bat, and no, I don't have sonar. However, I've learned to interpret shapes and blurry objects extremely well for someone as blind as myself. I like to walk around without my glasses or contacts now and then to prove to myself that I can live without them or a seeing eye dog.

I'm probably going to get laser eye surgery in a few years, assuming I can come up with the money for such a procedure. And if I can't, I'm gonna get one of those cool bands to go over my eyes like the guy on "Star Trek." In any case, I don't want to live the rest of my life like this, because the best I could hope for would be that my sight would stay the same. It sure as hell won't be getting any better by the grace of God.

So if you see me stumbling around campus, don't offer to help. I can do it myself. Plus, I'm working on my reflexes to I can go fight Charlie in 'Nam.