The Gymnasium
Miranda stepped out of the changing rooms into the gymnasium hall proper, dressed in her figure-hugging leotard: she was 14 years old, possessed of a gymnast’s typical slender, lithe build and a suitable smile, good at her art, but the two small red marks on each side of her pretty nose revealed a problem: outside of this hall, she wore glasses. At the moment these were metal framed ones with thick lenses, quite capable of efficiently, if not all that attractively, correcting her minus 9.5 or so myopia in each eye.
However, even in practice, the demands of appearance left her unable to wear her glasses, in contrast to all other places where so obviously needed. The gymnasium was at least familiar, but still capable of deceiving her in its perceived heavily blurred state. Items of equipment such as the pommel horse and balance beam, that she could otherwise see clearly, were hard to find unless she was nearby; although once on one of these, she was generally able to perform well enough. Her fuzzy, uncorrected vision was giving her increasing problems, for instance on the bar: it had become difficult to guide her hands and feet in the increased blur of her motion; the floor exercises were easier, but seeing the line that mustn’t be crossed was getting increasingly akin to guesswork. She’d fallen off equipment before thanks to her vision, but didn’t want to make a commotion about it. What could she do? No gymnast wore glasses in competition; by implication not in practice either. She was unable to wear contacts, so was obliged to manage with her blurred vision: a situation which she found increasingly inconvenient.
She went over to the floor, and after some wandering and persistent searching, she found one of the balls: the variety of exercise involving this was rather more like dance than gymnastics, but all part of the competition. She had to do things such as throw the ball and catch it, and move around in a manner closely resembling ballet: throwing the ball was easy, catching it less so with uncorrected myopia. She started her usual routine; throwing the ball upward. For her, it soon vanished somewhere in the featureless grey-brown murk above her, then reappeared just a little too late for her to catch it. Despite an ungainly jump sideways, it fell to the ground. She did a couple more throws and graceless drops before reluctantly deciding it was time to try it with glasses.
She found her way back to the changing room, and into her locker: there they were, sat in a hard snappy glasses case, big ugly things that traded appearances for hard, sharp vision. She opened the case, pushed them onto her face, and smiled grimly at the vastly improved vision they thus bestowed on her. She then returned to the main arena: now she could see everything, for example large things such as the gymnastic equipment, but also rather less relevant details including the scoreboard up high in the distance, and the roofing beams above her head. Upon returning to the padded floor section, she took the ball and threw it high above her head: she was able to watch it arc and fall, and follow it as it dropped neatly into her hands.
At that, she heard applause, and a whistle of approval emanating from behind her. Curious, she turned to see the source: it was a young lad some months her senior. He held a placard up: it read “20-20”. She wondered whether this was his opinion of her performance, or her vision? She waved, smiled and went to ask him.