Eyes that See and Ears that Hear

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This time of year often stirs mixed memories of all that goes with the ending of another school year. I have caught myself reflecting quite a bit this year, partly on account of the fact that it’s the 25th anniversary of the year I graduated, but more so because my oldest son is graduating from high school this spring (Yikes!)

High school graduation was proceeded by countless tests and term papers and more tests geared at determining how much of what I had been taught over the previous four years actually made a wrinkle in the gray matter between my ears. But there was one test I took my sophomore year (which I failed) that stands out from among the rest.

Like most 16-year-olds, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. Having lived in Nebraska when I turned 15, I was able to take Driver’s Ed during the summer before my 9th grade year and drive on a permit until my 16th birthday. My family moved to Salt Lake City just prior to starting high school, but I already had the permit in hand and our vehicles still bore Cornhusker license plates (Go Big Red).

I did what every dutiful young man does with a learner’s permit; doughnuts in the parking lot, seeing if I could get the station wagon airborne over speed bumps, sliding across the hood like Bo Duke and climbing in through the window (the Chevy Fleetwood station wagon made a very poor imitation of the General Lee), seeing how many of my friends we could cram into the vehicle at one time (actually, I didn’t know enough kids at the time, but I imagine the number would have been around 18 or so), and so on.

When my 16th birthday rolled around I scurried off to the DMV. The written test was no problem (I crammed the night before), the driving test presented more of a challenge, mostly because the officer in the front seat next to me kept staring at me and asking if I had ever evaded the police in the school parking lot after doing doughnuts. I scraped by – barely.

The last part, which should have been the easiest, turned out to be the hardest. I stepped up to the counter and the lady on the other side (who I swear was the lunch lady from elementary school) pointed to a chart on the wall behind her and asked me to read line three. “Line three? Which one is line three?” I asked.

Margret looked at me for moment, perhaps to see if I was joking and then stated, “The one with the big number three next to it.”

I blinked, squinted, leaned as far over the counter as I could without invading Margret’s space, but I couldn’t make out the number three nor the smaller letters to the right of it.

Margret had me step over to another counter and look through a view finder and asked me to read what I could see – which was nothing because everything looked like blotchy spots of multi-colored mold.

By then Margret was thinking I must have arrived on the short bus, either that or English wasn’t my native language. She stamped my driving test with a bright red “failed.” She then instructed me to visit my eye doctor and have him sign a note indicating that I could see well enough to drive.

After a visit to the friendly neighborhood eye doctor I came to discover that I was blind as a bat (bats aren’t really blind, but you get the point). The elderly eye doctor was shocked that I hadn’t noticed that everything was out of focus. I just figured everyone saw things just as I did; that chalkboards were illegible from the back row, that faces in the hallway were blurry until they were ten feet away. He seemed to give a sigh of relief to know he didn’t live anywhere near the streets upon which I learned how to drive. He kept using the word “menace” to describe my ocular ability behind the wheel of an automobile.

Needless to say, the first time I looked up at the mountains with my new glasses and could actually see trees and leaves and rocks, I was amazed. I walked around those first few days with my mouth agape and my eyes wide with wonder at everything I had been missing (of course my glasses looked like coke bottle bottoms and I hated wearing them, which, consequentially, led to them being regularly lost and broken until I persuaded my parents I needed contacts, which only took about three months).

It took failing that eye test for me to discover what I had been missing, for a weakness to become a strength. Life is like that, too. Sometimes we stumble along blindly letting our shins and our pride pay the price for our inability to see for ourselves what other might be able to see quite clearly. The Savior lamented over the hard heartedness of the people when He said, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.” (Matthew 13:15)