Radical Vision Corner: Secret Moves

Imagine that the world you see with your eyes is a blurry canvas – just like a photo but with not enough pixels. To add to the distortion, the bright sunlight is pouring through the open windows and is adding unwanted shimmer and glare. As you skim the blurry canvas, you wonder if you are missing anything important. Who are you kidding? Of course, you’re missing something. Sigh. You always miss something. There’s nothing you can do. But you can’t lose hope now. That’s not an option because your parents are relying on you. You close your eyes briefly and know that you have to pull out your secret moves. Oh, this better work. Your nose scrunched up, your eyebrows lowered and your gaze locked, you squint your eyes and try your level best to focus. You hope and pray that this makes a difference. It ends up being only a moderate effort – because how long can you squint your eyes for anyway before you lose your cool? You move your eyes up and down to readjust your makeshift binoculars. Is that an ‘1‘? Or is that a ‘7‘? It’s a puzzle. You notice your heart racing and some sweat down your forehead. Your neck starts to hurt. You wonder, why is your neck all tense? You look down and you notice your head is way over the edge of the desk. Of course, you’re trying to get as close as you can. Your desk screeches and your chair tips forward. You lose your balance for a moment – but you have a soft landing back on your wooden chair. Eyes glare all around you. You take a look around and you notice you’re not the only one who’s doing the secret move. 

A boy with big round eyes looks across the room at you – you can’t see the details of his face either, but you know he has the same expression as you. You can see his face all scrunched up from concentration, his eyes squinting to make out some detail, any detail that might help. You’ve been here before, this boy, this canvas, this face. As you look around the room, you see more faces, boys and girls, all looking at each other and desperately trying to make out what’s on their canvas. Finally, one of the kids goes too far – he tips over the desk and BANG!, lands right onto his face. This was a terrible secret move, you thought. Another kid seemed to have given up completely and had taken to drawing pictures of his dog on his desk – no moves there. I decided I’d had enough. I pushed my chair back and did the daring thing. I started walking. Take that, you old blur!