There are people who read for necessity. Then there are people who read for pleasure. Finally, there are people for whom reading borders on addiction. I am one of the latter.
Yesterday I had an eye doctor appointment. As part of the examination, the doctor handed me a story and asked me to read the first line. The good news: In my mid-forties, I can still read the fine print without contacts or glasses. The bad news: I only read the first line, and then it was taken away. It had something to do with a boat (there’s a small chance it could’ve been a boot, the writing was very small).
You cannot leave a reader hanging like that. Where were they taking the boat? What kind of boat was it? Were they on an island? If it was a boot, what were they doing with it? I needed to know.
Since everything I read is filed away somewhere in my brain (unfortunately the same isn’t true of details like where I parked the car), it sparked a memory of reading the same line at my last appointment. The least they could’ve done was let me read the second line this time. Then maybe by the time I turn 200, I will have gotten the entire story.
When she left me alone to wait for my eyes to dilate, the card was still on the shelf. My hands itched to grab it and read the rest of the story. Unfortunately, I hadn’t finished filling out insurance forms before my appointment, and I was in a rush to finish while I could still see to write. Therefore, when my doctor returned I was innocently sitting in the chair with my completed paperwork, pupils dilated, and still hadn’t read the next line.
Still haunted by that boat, I returned home. I knew it would take a while for my pupils to return to normal, so I turned on a Friends rerun rather than trying to read. Still, I couldn’t resist. Every time there was a commercial, I was compelled to open an email or grab a book, but I couldn’t focus my eyes. It was as if I was being denied a basic need. By the time Rachel got off the plane, my eyes had cleared. I spent the afternoon reading and writing, just because I could. It was like gorging after a diet.
I googled the line to see what happened to the boat. It must not have been from an actual piece of literature because all I found was a bunch of deals on dinner cruises. Nothing with a boot either.