I spoke to one of my colleagues ('P') earlier about the reason why I ended up moving house (hence the lack of posts recently. My handful of readers will, I'm sure, not have died of loneliness in the intervening time.)
I explained: because I can't drive a car, I found that commuting from Yorkshire every day was slowly draining me of energy and spirit. Permanently tired and irritable, something had to change, so I moved close enough to work that I can now walk there and back.
My colleague looked surprised. Walk? It's still quite a distance to the office from where you're living - have you thought about riding a bicycle to cut down on your travel time? I laughed and commented that I wasn't capable of balancing on a two-wheeled bike. I had been born with a weak left eye, the weakness of which was exacerbated when the all-encompassing 'they' operated on it two years too soon.
There was a pause as 'P' thought of a response to this. He said something like he had a weak left eye too, but it had never prevented him from getting around on an unstabilised bicycle. This revelation temporarily shocked me into silence.
Is it possible, I asked him out loud, that my parents (for it is from them that the 'can't balance' conjecture arrived) were simply protecting me from the realisation of my own uselessness when they cooked up this story? Might it be that a mediocre eye is no barrier to the completion of all manner of acrobatics, but the presence of a different, unspecified deficit precludes them?
I never even thought until a few hours ago that my mediocre eye might be something whose existence is hiding a wider malaise. It had always been such a certain plank of my world-view that I haven't once sought to question it. Information we take in at a very young age has a habit of being absorbed uncritically - there exists a vengeful Catholic god who bears witness to everything; electricity is created by little electrified blue men emptying the contents of buckets; mushy peas are an acquired taste, son.
I now realise the sacrifices made by parents in order to protect their offspring from troubling situations or information. Rather than the straightforward declaration of '(unlike absolutely everyone your age) you cannot ride a bicycle,' it was cleverly orientated with my 'condition' in order that I felt not disappointment but privilege.
'You cannot ride a bicycle because your eye refuses to permit you to balance' was interpreted, in the way my parents intended or otherwise, as a grand superlative, akin to being told that if anyone else had an eye like that, they'd barely be able to stand up! The truth, meanwhile, is that I can't ride a bike because I was a contrary, awkward child who was reluctant to even try. If you could be bothered, you'd probably be able to do it but we don't love you any less for having a lazy left eye and a lazy disposition.
