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The Cock-eyed Optometrist
by
Ofavon
The prompt was a pair of eyeglasses.
Doctor Specks, the optometrist snapped a pair of lenses in the eyepiece and
stood back ... “Now, can you read line eight, young man?”
“No. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You want me to say, W-C-G-P-E- ..... well it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t
spell anything.”
The optometrist, a little unsettled, said “Of course it doesn’t spell
anything. It’s just letters - you’re supposed to read the letters.” He
impatiently
runs his finger around his collar.
Grudgingly, the young man starts to read the line of letters. “Double V -
half-an-O - half-an-O with a little J.” -
“What do you mean , ‘Double V’?”
“Two ‘V’s next to each other.”
“You mean ‘Double U’ don’t you?”
“No, Double V. If it was Double U the bottoms would be round.”
The optometrist now drums his fingers on his lens cabinet. “But that’s the
way we make a Double U. That’s the way we always make a Double U.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re always changing prescriptions.”
“I don’t ...”
“I call those letters the way I see them, doctor. We both see the same
letters but we don’t see them the same.” The young man put the glasses on again
and
looked at the chart. “The next letter is not a ‘C’, it’s a ‘half-an-O’.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Then you’ve got a ‘half-an-O with a little ‘J’. You know that thing you
call an em?”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Exactly. Two wigwams.”
“Look, young man - I can’t go on with this examination if you can’t read the
chart.”
“Who said I can’t read the chart? I can read the chart all the way down to
the bottom line.”
The optometrist stood up and straightened his white coat. “Well! If that’s
the case why did you bother to come in at all?”
The young man reached in the briefcase standing at his side and pulled out a
strange looking pair of glasses. “Well, doctor - I’m glad you asked me that.
I represent Microsight, we’re a division of Microsoft. These spectacles,” and
he displayed a very curious pair of eyeglasses, “will revolutionize the
age-old art of optometry.”
“My dear boy, I’ll have you know optometry is not an art, it is a science.
The technique of prescription glasses has been carefully honed since the days
of Benjamin Franklin.”
“Horse-balls, doctor,” the young man said confidently. “Take off those
glasses of yours and just hook these suckers over your ears, your eyes will be
opened sir, I promise you.”
The curious doctor put the young man’s glasses on and looked at his eye
chart. “Remarkable,” he said I can read line eight with these glasses of yours.”
“Each lens is a window based PC, doc ... notice anything else?” The doctor’s
mouth hung open in amazement.
“Why yes I do! The eye chart! It reads ... THERE’S ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE.”
“Exactly sir. That’s the Microsoft motto.”
The End
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