Prompt: "For as long as I can remember, I had known the phrase, 'Don’t get your hopes up . . . '"

"For as long as I can remember, I had known the phrase, 'Don’t get your hopes up,' my mother had said it habitually about even the smallest form of desire."

- from Clare Sestanovich's Old Hope.

I don't actually ever write to any of the prompts that I bring to my writing group, but at least I'm writing something. A few days ago, I got an ad for vivid vision with a clip from a Time Magazine article. A fellow lazy-eye guy, but with brains, invented a game you can play on your Oculus Rift that is supposedly curing adults with crossed eyes.

It sounds too good to be true but the people in the testimonials are animatedly talking about seeing in 3-D for the first time. “I went to the grocery store and the oranges were so round. This woman shook her head in the bread aisle and you could see each individual hair moving right at me. Then, I stood at an end cap moving my face, looking at the potato chip bag in awe until I caught a store employee looking at me weird and I had to stop.”

One lady started a blog about it. She talked about going out on a hike and finally understanding what all of the nature hype was about. It’s like those viral color blindness videos where families chip in to buy their loved one those experimental new glasses and they see red for the first time, only less dramatic.

I made an appointment to try it with a doctor in Marin because you have to have a prescription to buy the games. There shouldn’t be a price on sight or hearing in my opinion, but then again, I’ve never invented anything.

My dog Max has something wrong with his mouth. It's turning from black to pink. He’s turning into a little old man dog right before my very-blind eyes and it is depressing. They have to put him under anesthesia to get a good look at his mouth because he freaks out so bad at the vet.

I’m not sure what this has to do with not getting my hopes up. Are my hopes up that one day I’ll stop being cross eyed and driving into things? I guess since I made an appointment, yes. What will I bitch about once I have fake hair, straight eyes, straight teeth, and I’ve lost fifty pounds? I guess there will always be stretch marks.