Vision

So here’s a funny thing. I had to renew my driver’s licence the other day, in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). It was time to get a new picture and have my eyes tested. Somehow, because I’ve not found time to get to the optometrist for some time beyond when I was due, the ‘eyes tested’ part began to worm its way into my mind. What is the standard? (I could not recall from last time, it has been so long.) What if my vision is not as clear as it should be? Will they withhold the renewal? With recent events at home, this is the worst time to not have a license, etc. This all began as a low murmur in my mind but it steadily rose in amplitude as I got to the DMV, waited in the appointment line, got my waiting ticket, and sat down to meet my assigned official.

I actually love sitting in places in DMVs for while. (I know, it is weird. I also like dentist’s visits, although for different reasons, but that’s another story. You get it – I’m odd, let’s move on…) There’s something about the slice of life one gets in such places where almost everyone, regardless of walk of life, has to go at some point. There are all sorts of people, interactions, arrangements of workspaces, fascinating little stations for different functions, and signs, endless signs hanging on walls and from ceilings reminding people of things, reminding me of little village post offices in Britain. …It is all very interesting, and full of sketching opportunities. I prepared to get out my notebook and a pen. But then I noticed the set up for eye testing. There were charts up above each group of DMV office stations. They seemed very close to where the applicant would stand, so I imagined there was some arrangement with mirrors I could not yet see that would make them be visually further away. Surely.

No.

I need not have worried, on two counts. The first is that the letters are remarkably, (almost ridiculously, it seemed to my worried mind) close. The second is hilarious to me. As you can see from the picture (click for larger view), each line you are supposed to read is a permutation of the same five letters! F-L-E-P-T And it is a cyclic permutation! (i.e., the letters are in same order.) They ask you to read a line (they tell you which) with both eyes first, and then to cover an eye and read another assigned line, and then do it again for another line with the other eye. But since you’ve done it already once with both, for the rest you can just remember the permuted five letters – there’s hardly any mistaking one for the other. Well… unless of course your eyes are really in trouble, in which case you’d maybe have been stumbling over people and furniture the whole time at the cluttered DMV, and they’d have spotted you and taken away your car keys on the spot…

On leaving the DMV (after a disappointing visit to the camera station for the photograph – they now make you take your glass off, apparently because of “glare”. I resisted the urge to glare at the official at this disclosure) I did find myself wondering how the standards of this eye test were arrived at. Very possibly they are exactly as they should be. I’ve no idea. It is an issue of what sort of detail do you need to be able to see when driving – How far away do you need to be able to see and read signs with crucial information (STOP, YIELD, etc. – and of course there’s shape and colour information in those signs too), or signs with information that if you were not seeing clearly it might cause you to drive erratically (like reading street names when looking for your turn), etc?

Anyway, evidently acute lack of sleep is a really great way of magnifying relatively minor concerns…

-cvj