Thursday, May 29, 2014

149/365-2 A Vision of Safety


"A Man, A Plan, A Hat"

We are wrapping up May and Healthy Vision Month.  Today's reference to safety was directed towards eye safety and the importance of wearing sunglasses.  Weber is very good about wearing his sunglasses.  He also is good about wearing his hat in the winter to keep his bald head warm and in the summer to keep it from getting sunburned.  I, on the other hand, should wear a hat and sunglasses all the time, but don't.  I never have.  It is not a vanity thing.  After fifty years I finally figured out what my aversion to hats and sunglasses really is.

Claustrophobia...that is why I don't like sunglasses.  They make me feel boxed in, a feeling I can't stand.  Just ask the tech who tried to strap my head down and shove me in a tube to do a CT scan.  Or the dentist who tried to put an oxygen mask over my face when prepping to take my wisdom teeth out.  I learned that I was claustrophobic the hard way and lots of people learned right along with me.  It was nice of that CT scan person to pull me quickly out of that tube and give me those nice little white pills. They cure claustrophobia and lots of other things with one little swallow.

When I was a teenager my mother would always gripe at me because I wore my clothes too big.  Actually I think she was still nagging me about that up until the point that she died eight years ago.  I have always been, and still am, a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl.  As Brooke say, "That's how I roll."  I could never quite figure out what her objection was to my comfortable attire.  At least I wasn't wearing clothes that were too tight.  My requisite body parts were always appropriately covered.

It wasn't until fairly recently that I realized that my personal style of oversized clothing is also the result of my serious disdain of feeling closed in.  I don't like anything tight or binding - not jeans, or shoes, or shirts, or even socks.  I don't care what others think about the way I dress.  The fact that this also included my mom when she was alive was the point of departure for many arguments.  

I am so lucky that I have a career that doesn't require me to wear tight clothes to get the job done.  You know what I'm talking about - primarily women in sales who are not appealing to a customer's intellect but rather to their...well...you know.  Or the news anchors who are hired so that audiences will watch the news rather than listen to it.  Academia is OK with personal style.  Jeans and tennis shoes are acceptable.  It is one of the few places where how you do your job is more important than what you dress like when you are teaching. 

So I will continue to dress in such a way as to keep me free of claustrophobia.  Trust me, that is better for everyone around me...unless you happen to carry those little white pills around with you and then I'll put on anything you want, wear sunglasses and let you shove my head in that tube!

All that to say that because Weber is a better sport with his sunglasses than I am, he got tagged for today's picture.