He knew the right eye was OK, but the left- well it had ‘gone’ a long time ago. He had to make it through this for the training to continue – his employer had shelled out a cool $750 to put him on the course.

His hand covered his left eye in a star trek salute while they ran through a series of charts. Apprehension grew like a basketball in his stomach – the right eye wasn’t as good as he remembered!- those last couple of symbols were starting to form lines of dancing Egyptian serving boys- and a puzzled look swept the face of the tester.

Swapping his hand to the right eye the real code breaking began. He had been training at home – recognizing outlines, words and letters from fuzzy abstractions and trying to memorise the shapes. He’d heard about one Air force pilot who knowing he was not 20/20 had memorised every chart in the known world to pass his test!

With his hand forming a bat wing over the right eye he descended another pyramid of letters. He reeled off the first three lines with ease, – at line four it began to become jumbled shapes and by line five it all seemed to fuse into a long line of licorice with nothing discernible. On another chart he followed the marching feet of letters easily to line four, but from here the parade seemd to halt. Swimming hazy outlines seemed to be trying to hypnotise him into believing they were something they were not! Panic rose as if he’d just taken a hot pie out of the oven without gloves, the embarrasment and frustration seared at him, layers of skin seemed to be peeling off while he looked for a benchtop to dispense his woes onto.