A giant squid got me thinking

By SINEAD BOUCHER

Squid, of any size, rarely occupy much space in my brain unless they are chopped up and cooked with a nice salt and pepper batter. But my fancy was really rather taken by coverage of the giant squid being chopped up at Te Papa this week.

Among the incredibly excited scientists defrosting, chopping, dicing and, ew, even tasting the most colossal colossal squid ever caught, was one man who was totally overcome by the sheer size of one single organ. It wasn't the guy who said he had spent years studying average squid sex and was dying for a rummage round the giant one's bits and pieces. This other scientist was simply overcome by the sheer size and beauty of the squid's enormous eye.

It was the biggest eye of any species on the planet, a dinner-plate sized marvel of nature. What, I wondered, would that huge squid have seen with that huge eye, down there in the secret deep of the Ross Sea. It must be very dark down there, after all. But if size is anything to go by, a lens the size of a man's fist must be a powerful thing. It is quite possible scientists will discover this was some sort of super eye. I wondered how far and how clearly it could see. Presumably clearly enough to catch the enormous fish it preyed on in the blackest deep, but perhaps not clearly enough to see the fishing net that put an end to its life.

I was still thinking about this marvellous giant squid eye while sitting in the optometrists office the next day, waiting for my annual eye test. I have absolutely shocking vision, and without my contacts or specs would be hard-pressed to recognise my own mother in front of me.

A young girl, about eight, came in to pick up her very first pair of glasses. Watching her try them on and, frowning, examine her changed (but no doubt clearer) reflection in the mirror, I was reminded of the day I got my own first pair of glasses at the same age.

They were a bloody nuisance. As my sight got progressively worse, there was less I could do without my glasses but less I could do with them. Swimming and sport became harder to do well. I couldn't see well enough to swim without my specs but they were a hazard when it came to running, jumping and catching balls. And, as I grew older, let's just say the combination of frames shaped like televisions, with lenses almost as thick, weren't conducive to teen romance. Thinking back, I'm surprised more Catholic mothers didn't make their teenage daughters wear specs like mine.

I hated them so much, both for the way they looked and for how dependent I was on them. Contact lenses at 16 were the best present I ever received.

Wearing glasses definitely shaped the choices I made in life, both consciously and subconsciously. I became a stereotypical four-eyes, into things like debating and youth parliaments and other godawful stuff like that. Poor vision turned me into a bookworm. I did "brainy" things with other speccy girls. Most of them ended up as doctors and lawyers and other things that took years to study. I, however, having specs but a terribly lazy nature, ended up as a journalist, which took only a six-month polytech course.

Of course, there was an upside. I didn't even realise my vision was poor until I got glasses and the blackboard suddenly became clear. Thanks to my glasses I could read well and do well at school, learn to drive a car and even apply lipstick in more or less the right place. I could navigate my way around any foreign city, read the subtitles in foreign movies.

With my contacts in I was able to first identify and secondly bat my eyelashes at my future husband during boring bits in our journalism course. Without them he would no doubt still have been a faceless blob on the other side of the classroom. I occasionally have nightmares about losing my glasses somewhere and being unable to find my way home. My bad vision makes me feel terribly vulnerable. If I was born a century or two earlier I would surely have ended up begging in the gutter, no good for any kind of work or any kind of husband either.

My sister asked me the other day that if I was rich and could get any one plastic surgery thing, what would it be. We love those kind of conversations. It is always very hard to choose just one thing. But I always end up picking laser eye surgery. It isn't exactly cosmetic surgery but would most definitely change my life. The thought of getting up every morning and being able to see clearly without putting on my glasses is wonderful. Realistically it is unlikely I will ever fork out thousands for such a luxury operation, not when my contacts do the job. Instead I'll donate some money to the Fred Hollows Foundation where, for the unbelievably small price of $25, someone's sight can be restored. How amazing that those doctors can do something so utterly lifechanging for so little. How amazing also that another group of scientists have almost perfected a bionic eye to grant sight to the blind and how wonderful that the parents of one young girl killed in the recent canyoning tragedy felt able to donate her corneas to give someone such a precious gift as sight.

I don't think my corneas will be worth donating but I certainly would if I could. Meanwhile, I've gone back to thinking about the giant squid and its giant eye. I would really like to see the world's largest eye, to hold it and feel the weight of it and find out how far it could see, like those scientists converging on Te Papa will do. I noticed lots of them wore glasses, too.

- © Fairfax NZ News