Little Black Dots

Today I went to the optometrist. Though I am usually made to linger in the waiting room for a pre-arranged amount of time (regardless of whether I am early, on time, or late to my appointment), today I was able to skip those obligatory minutes spent languidly flipping through the magazines set out specifically to occupy those moments which collectively compose a small eternity. The selection of magazines, pretty much standard fare for doctors' offices, dentists, optometrists, etc, carries fairly prosaic articles, so I was more than a little relieved *not* to be made to waste away on the reception couches.

Once taken into the exam room, the nurse [is she really a nurse in the RN sense? I think she's more of a receptionist endowed with slightly higher-level responsibilities and allowed more patient interaction] asked me a series of questions about my vision and general health, a survey that culminated with this: "Do you ever see little black I answered in the negative, but shortly after realized that I understood exactly what she was describing because I had in fact seen little black floaties. Then I began to worry. What are the floaties? What does seeing them represent? Am I going to die because of them?

The optometrist came in before my anxiety, aided by my psychosis, had a chance to reach its potential and blossom into full blown obsession. "The nurse asked me if I have ever seen little black floaties," I told him. "I said no...but now that I think about it, I do very, very occasionally see them." My optometrist nodded tacitly as he scribbled something into my patient information files. Based on his response, the floaties didn't appear to be life threatening—either that, or he had no vested interest in the preservation of my life. "What does it mean if I have seem them—but only very occasionally?"

"It means you're getting older," he replied. "JT, how old are you," he asked.

"26."

"Oh geeze, you're really getting over the hill," he deadpanned.

Point taken: getting older (especially when older involves moving from your early- to mid- twenties) isn't as dire as, say, "little black floaties invariably precede glaucoma," or little black floaties are highly correlated with retinal cancer," or "little black floaties are harbingers of complete and permanent blindness." Still, for someone coming to terms with his own "aging" (for example, click here, here, or here), finding further proof of one's losing battle with time in the form of physiological decline is not comforting. And when one is pre-career and pre-dating, aging in the face of one's friends' graduating from grad school, getting married, rising in their respective professional fields, having children, and planning how much of each paycheck should be allocated into a 401K makes the insidious creep of time seem all the more pernicious.

And to make matters worse, I found a few nascent moles emerging on my face. After having nine of them painfully removed a few summers ago (and wearing bandages for three months afterward), I am not looking forward to the prospect of having to go back in under the knife. These new little black dots are just another reminder of that insidious creep. Here it comes.