Focus Fogal

"Overloaded with beach essentials, a man treks through the inlet sand toward the parking lot in Ocean City, Md. on Tuesday, July 1."

My eyes continually race across my computer screen, busy like a clogged artery. They are heavy and my head spinning into a confused state like five-year-old in a jet plane cockpit.

It finally hit me this afternoon that not only have I not been to an Optomotrist in more than 10 years, but that I may very well need some form of eye correction.

When I was in the first grade I remember visiting the local eye doctor. He sat me down and screened my vision with the obligatory lettered chart. Read line four aloud.

I cannot recall what my vision was, however, I do remember the photograph that is buried deep in the family photos of me standing my parent's living room in my gray Jarrettsville soccer jersey gleaming ear-to-ear like I had just been injected with too much morphine following a painful surgery.

No idea why I'd be smiling, the picture displayed my true inner geek. Conversely, the glasses that had once occupied my face in the image were now overlaying someone else's eyeballs.

The glasses were worn maybe for about a week. I had thought I was the coolest, most intellectual eight-year-old this side of Harford County, but I guess when I got to school I was in my own right mind the biggest dork this side of the first grade.

Those wired framed, bi-glassed forms of correction ended up being gently placed in the pharmacy bin of donated eye wear.

Fast forward some 15 years later. My vision, while I believe to be top notch, needs some help. Of recent, prolonged computer time leaves me feeling fatigued and life looking slightly blurred.

Amid the other problems, getting glasses and possibly contacts do not seem to bother me. I am hoping that a nice set of lenses, be glass or silicone hydrogels, will help me out in some capacity.

It's odd how when you're younger you're worried about being called four-eyes or Fogal. Side note: is that why Fogal, a la McLovin, from "Super Bad" was called Fogal? Because he wore glasses? Bifocals? Bifogals?

Nonetheless, I'd kill to have my current vision problems vanish no matter what it takes.

I'd wear two drinking glasses tied around my head with rope at this point to make some sort of correction and my vision therapeutic again.

Well, I am only prolonging my exposure to my computer by writing this post and editing more images from the beach. I should get my sleep as I start at The Baltimore Sun tomorrow as a photo intern for the rest of the summer.

I've been "looking" forward to this day since April. A bit anxious, yet more eager, I cannot wait.