Obviously I'm not blind

If I were, I'd have said it by now. So there really wasn't much suspense. But this story does point out why I'd make an awesome superhero, so you should still read it.

I am surrounded by doctors. My wife is in her fourth year of med school. My brother- and sister-in-law are residents. My father is a cardiac anesthesiologist and my father-in-law is a retired family physician.

So when they finally told me "yes you have shingles" I knew what that meant. It meant "yes, there is a chance you'll be blind in one eye."

I swear to you the following were the first thoughts to go through my head:

If I go blind, I'm rocking an eye patch. I don't want a glass eye, or one eye that doesn't actually see stuff and points the wrong way. I'm totally getting an eye patch.

And I'm gonna redo my whole resume. Shit yeah, I'm going to format it so all the copy is on the left half of the page, and the whole right half is blank. Then at the top I'll put "Ben Levy: a writer with singular vision". I will totally stand out from the crowd.

Honestly, those were my first thoughts.

Which means I, like Spider-Man, crack wise at the sight of terrible, life-altering danger. We men of action see our darkest fear staring us in the face, and we make jokes out of it. I faced a life of eternal myopia, and I mocked it.

According to my father, I was just in denial.

That's ridiculous.

Mind you, while those thoughts were running through my head, my mouth was laughing. Not-hysterical-but-a-little-more-loudly-than-I-probably-should-be-under-the-circumstances-laughing. We men of action are entitled to such things.

Faster than a speeding neuron

I found this article on Wired interesting. It basically says if you read too fast, your brain can't process the words. That may seem basic, but let me explain.

I believe in super powers. I just don't think these powers make really cool noises, or surround you with colorful auras when used. Everyone knows somebody who seems to have extraordinary abilities. That guy who never seems to get hurt no matter how hard he gets hit. Or that girl who eats as much as she wants and still has a (ahem) "bangin" body. I would call those super powers. They're tiny genetic mutations that give people an advantage in a specific area. I had a whole digression here, but I'll save it for another post.

My super power is speed-reading. For years I've been able to tear through books at an average of 80-100 pages an hour. And for months afterward, my memory of what I've read is near photographic. I used to destroy the curve in my English classes. Not only was I reading the book instead of the cliffs notes, I could read the entire novel in the time allotted for the first three chapters, and still answer the questions on each test thereafter with perfect accuracy. Side note: I was almost universally despised by the students in my English classes.

But while I defy the scientific facts presented in Wired, there is one side-effect I've noticed. It's very strange, and I wonder if anyone else out there has ever experienced it. If I read a book in a single sitting (something that is not uncommon), I tend to finish the book feeling as though I've missed something. I've written the following paragraph three times in an attempt to explain it properly, so here we go.

Ok, remember that scene in the Matrix where Neo gets crap downloaded straight into his head? Then he sits up and goes "I know Kung Fu". I think it's sort of like that. I sudenly discover my brain now holds an entire story, a whole cast of characters that I never knew about before. But at the same time, I haven't fully explored them. It's like picking through my brain and discovering I knew stuff I didn't know I knew.

If this sounds confusing, believe me, it is.

It's such an irritating sensation that I forced myself to read Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind over a period of three days. The effort it took to put that book down nearly killed me, but it was worth it. I've discovered that if I break for about an hour, my mind can catch up, and I'm spared that disorientation at the end of the book. Anyone else have any experiences like this? In the meantime, I'll be by the phone, waiting for Stan Lee to call with my movie offer.