Well, let me start by saying that, although in mythology a Cyclops is a being with one eye in the middle of its forehead, my husband doesn’t look like that. His eyes actually look fairly normal, except for the time the shop vac backfired and puffed a load of detritus into his face, irritating one eye. It was bloodshot and horrible, so we went to the ER. The doctor did not, alas, put a patch on his eye. (I have a thing for pirates. But I digress.)

But they’re not. He has something called monovision. Which, to me, sounds like what a Cyclops would have.

Our story begins in Dan’s childhood, lo these many years ago. One day his parents realized his eyesight was something less than ideal and took him to the eye doctor. When he came home with glasses, he exclaimed, “Look! Those people on the TV! They have faces!” It was the first of many revelations.

(My story is similar, except for the TV part. I got my first pair of glasses at age 3, and have worn them ever since. (Well, increasingly larger pairs, including cat’s-eye glasses back when they were popular in the early sixties.) I’ve never had contacts because even the idea of something touching my eye makes me want to hurl. But I digress again.)

So Dan continued wearing glasses and sometimes contacts until his doctor informed him just last year that he had cataracts bad enough that they needed fixing. (Again, the notion of someone attacking an eyeball with a scalpel nauseates me. But I digress yet again.)

Dan’s goal was never to have to wear glasses again. However, because of his astigmatism, Dan was told that, even after the cataract surgery, he would still need glasses for reading. Picturing himself with a librarian-style chain around his neck, Dan was desolate. (Besides, that would clash with the pendant he always wears of a peace sign with a piece of the authentic stage from Woodstock. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, Dan had his right eye done. As it healed, it turned out that this eye had great distance vision (20/20), while his left was still pretty good with close-up reading. This, the surgeon informed him, was called monovision, and he could sculpt the new lens so that Dan would have distance vision in the right eye and retain his close vision in the left. Dan was ecstatic and signed right up for the procedure.

(I remember reading somewhere that Ronald Reagan achieved the same effect by wearing a contact lens in one eye but not the other. With his close-vision eye, he could read his speech, and with the distance-vision eye, he could see the audience and how they were reacting. But I digress historically.)

Dan still had to wear glasses for a while, of course—dark glasses when he was out and about in the sunlight and safety glasses when he was rototilling or sawing. (I expected these would be clear plastic that wrapped around to the sides of his head. But no. They turned out to be ones with thick, black frames that I can only describe as birth control glasses. But I digress still more.)

So I was, as I so often am, wrong. Not a Cyclops. Just a guy with monovision. Still, it’s comforting to think of him driving around town with one eye on the road and the other one on the gas gauge. No, wait. I guess it really isn’t. But if he ever has to give a speech, he’ll be ready!