Better now? Or better now?

I had an eye exam today.

It's always a high-pressure situation. They go through all those different lenses, and if you choose wrong... you'll have headaches or see blurry for a whole year! Compounding the problem, they never change the eye chart so you already know what the letters are. It's hard to tell your brain to guess a letter that you know is incorrect, just to get the point across that it's a little unsharp.

The bottom line of the standard eye chart is TZVECL. I know this, in part, because that's the eye chart I saw today. But there's a funny family story about this eye chart that I couldn't forget.

My grandmother, a fluent speaker of Yiddish, lived in a high-rise condo building. In the underground garage, one of the nearby cars had the license plate TZVECL. My grandmother was baffled -- it sure sounded like a Yiddish word, but she had no idea what it meant. Finally, one day she caught the driver getting out of his car and asked what his license plate meant -- was it German? He laughed and replied that he's an ophthamologist, and his license plate is the bottom line on the eye chart.

Probably ten years later, in another part of the country... the Optometrist (next to Lenscrafters) still uses the same chart.

And in case you're curious - my prescription is a little weaker now, following a pattern of the last few years whereby my vision is mysteriously getting better. This should also help to prevent the headaches I've been getting occasionally.