For the past six months or better, I’d been driving around like Stevie Wonder in an obstacle course.

I couldn’t see a fricking thing.

The signs were beginning to blur, and at night, the glare from oncoming traffic nearly sent me careening off the road.

It didn’t used to be this way. Back in my days of teaching in Hartford, there was a glitch in our health insurance policy that enabled every teacher in the district to receive corrective lasik eye surgery free of charge. That was twenty years ago, and since then, my vision had been so precise I could count every leaf on every tree.

Up until now, that is. I missed the world in 20/20 (not to be confused with 2020). I wanted to be able to see again.

I’ve worn glasses before, but only while reading. And no matter how alluring the lenses appeared on the rack, I could never quite pull off the sexy librarian look. No matter which way you cut it, they were old lady trifocals. And they were one of the last things I wanted dangling from my nose while I’m driving.

Maybe it was karma, I decided. For a solid year, I’d announced “Sit down, Waldo!” every time Doug boarded the bus to Vogel School in his coke bottle glasses. Maybe, thirty-five years later, payback had finally arrived.

I was contemplating all of this in my driveway from the passenger seat of my car last week. Our minivan broke down, and Doug and I had to drive to Capuano Automotive in Winsted together to pick it up.

Doug came out of the house, opened the car door, slid into the driver’s seat, looked ahead and declared, “Goddamn! Do you ever wash your windows?”

He retreated into the garage, grabbed a rag and a bottle of Windex, and wiped off my front windshield.

And just like that, I can finally see again.