My response to another writing prompt found online. I encourage anyone learning to write, and anyone who wants to be a better writer, to take the time to respond to challenges like this one. They are great exercise.
I see you staring at me. “Who’s the freaky old man with the bulging eyes?” Go ahead. Laugh. Say all the mean and hateful things you want. You won’t have anything to say I haven’t heard before. That’s just fine. I’m over it all anyway. You see, my eyes aren’t actually big and bulging. It’s my glasses. They make my eyes look that way. My eyes don’t look much different from yours. That doesn’t mean they don’t see differently. They just don’t look different. I can tell you don’t understand what I’m saying. No one does. No one ever does. I’m not pretty or loud or popular or rich or poor or privileged or disadvantaged or celebrated or discriminated against or anything else that would make me special enough for anyone to take the time to pay more than ten seconds’ worth of attention to me.
Too bad.
I’m a farseer. Most folks who wear glasses are nearsighted, which means they can see things just fine up close, but they have a hard time seeing things far away. Eye docs call that myopia. Some folks are farsighted, meaning they can see far away but can’t see things up close. That’s called hyperopia. I have that, but it’s not your normal, run-of-the-mill hyperopia. And yes, I know. I’m old, but I don’t have presbyopia, which is when you can’t see up close because your eyes are getting older. I have hyperopia. I’ve had it since I was a kid. The glasses I have worn since preschool magnify my eyes, so they look oversized. They make contact lenses for hyperopia, but I can’t wear them. My eyes are too sensitive.
Too bad.
So yeah, I’m a farseer. I mentioned that, right? I’m farsighted. It’s true. But what you need to understand, and what everyone misses out on, is that I’m not just farsighted. I can see far. Not just far distances, although that’s true, but also far into the future. Not just any future. I can see into a person’s future, so long as they look into my eyes for ten or fifteen seconds. It’s a gift, I suppose, although many times it feels like some kind of punishment. It’s also annoying that people are uncomfortable looking into my bespectacled peepers because of the magnifying effect of my lenses. Seems to me they used to do it more than they do now. I made a lot of people upset. Not everyone has a rosy future, you know. Some stones are best left unturned.
Too bad. Or maybe too good.
Since people don’t want to see what the next corner will reveal for them so much anymore, I spend most of my time seeing far away rather than far past tomorrow, because I can’t see my own future. I’ve tried, using a mirror, to look into my own eyes and get it to work, but it never does. So, I focus, no pun intended, on looking into the distance. It sometimes feels like voyeurism, and I have to admit to a little bit of that sin, particularly in my younger years, but as I started to look farther and farther away it felt less and less like intrusion.
Across town, across the country, across the ocean, and finally across the emptiness of space, I looked deeper and deeper until, at last, I found a place where I am comfortable. I look there all the time. I have no idea how far away it is, but I never look at anything on this earth anymore. It’s all become too ugly for me to bear. I go to my far place and watch the people there. They are people, but you wouldn’t recognize them as people. They look nothing like you. They look nothing like me. That’s why I love them so.
The more I think about it, the more I think people may be trying to look me in the eye, but I don’t return their gaze. I’m too focused on the far away.
Too bad. I am a farseer.