The Horror Of Bad Eyesight

Growing up, I was very much a scaredy cat. I was well known for it at school and amongst my friends, and I often got teased for it. When I was eleven, I went to my first sleepover at my best friend’s house along with two other girls.

We had minimal supervision, and our host’s older sister had managed to sneak her a horror movie DVD rental. I was very nervous. The other girls were excited about doing something so “adult,” and I didn’t want to be teased for being a scaredy-cat again, so I just went along with it. The movie was very violent and very gory.

I’ve had really bad eyesight for basically my whole life. I got glasses when I was five, and my prescription became worse every year. At some point within the first five minutes of the movie, after the first scare, I realized I could just take my glasses off and “watch” the whole movie; we were about fifteen feet away from the TV, and I could just make out blurry outlines of colors on the TV.

Since we were watching something we weren’t meant to be watching, the sound was turned down fairly low, low enough that I could tune it out. I basically replayed my favorite Disney princess movie in my mind the whole night.

About a week later, my mom asked me about the horror movie at the sleepover. Apparently, the host had nightmares every night and came clean to her mom, who then rang up my mom to apologize. I was apparently the only girl of the four of us not to get nightmares.