Lazy

I am not a very lazy person. I usually do my work when it needs to be done. But I do have one lazy part, my left eye.
I didn't know my eye was lazy until I was almost 6 years old. In kindergarten the teacher tested everyone's eyes. That was when I found out that I do almost all my seeing with my right eye, and only a little with my left eye. I could see all the letters on the eye chart with my right eye, but only the big E
with my left eye. My left eye probably started out weaker when I was born. Sometimes, if one eye is a lot stronger than the other, a person uses it more, and eventually the brain doesn't pay much attention to what the weaker eye is seeing.
Sometimes you can make the weaker eye work harder by putting a patch over the stronger eye. They eye doctor tried that when I was in first grade. I wore that patch for 9 weeks and I hated it. I couldn't see well enough with my left eye to read, and that is what you are supposed to do in first grade. And besides, people were always asking, "What's the matter with you eye"?
One time when someone asked me that I said "You need to pay two cents for each question".
My mommy said I coudn't say that. I suppose I should have said "Please don't ask me that question". But it's hard to be polite when you are unhappy about something and then someone asks about it.
Unfortunately, the 9 weeks didn't help, so I still have a lazy eye. For a long time a blamed my kindergarten teacher for discovering that I had it, but now I know that it wasn't her fault. I've gotten used to the situation. I'm not very good at games where you have to catch or hit a ball. When I draw pictures, sometimes they slant to the left without me wanting them to. And I'm extra careful when I drive a car, because it is harder for me to judge how far away other cars are. But those are small problems and don't really bother me.
And there is one good thing: sometimes when people have two good eyes, they have trouble doing certain things when they close one of them, like touching their nose with their finger. I'm so used to using one eye that I can do it much better!

Photo courtesy of firemind on Flickr.