Blinded by the Light

     We moved into the Village of Valley Falls when I was five years old, and from my front porch, in the late afternoons, I could see where the sidewalk ended.  The sidewalk curved down, in a westerly direction, until it was consumed by the giant red ball that was the setting sun.  The sidewalk then was concrete, smooth more or less except for two blocks of it at about the middle of the deserted gas station next door to us.  One of those sidewalk blocks had cracked and there was some sign of repair to it, while the adjacent block was completely blacktop.  That was about as far as I could trace the path of the sidewalk before the blinding glare of the sun obliterated my line of vision.  I never thought about it, but I would have thought it was the same for everybody, and there is no way of knowing whether that was true or not.  About three years ago, I was told I have a congenital condition, a corneal dystrophy, named after a Dr.  Fuchs, of which the symptoms are glare intolerance, halos and streamers around lights, blurriness and auras.  I also remember that when I was little and someone broke out a box camera to take snapshots of us kids, I was always singled out to stop squinting.  How could the sun have always been in my eyes only.  I guess we  tend to believe that we all have the same perspective on life, until the passage of time tells us differently.