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It's funny how I remember people. You see, most people would just remember one or more obscure object of that person's physical appearance, like their long hair, or their big nose. But my problem with that is there are so many people with long hair, or big noses, or indeed, both.
So me, being such a silly person, would always be giving names to the wrong appearance. yet the human eye, well, that's different. No single pair of eyes are the same. All human intelligence seems to rise up and shine through the eyes. Which is probably why mine don't shine so much...
If you said a name and I thought of them, well, the first thing I think of is a pair of eyes. Their pair of eyes. Then the rest of them sort of just fills into my memory. Like you've opened a child's colouring book, and they've only coloured the cartoon people's eyes in, and then, magically, the colours, in all there bright glory just appear on the page.
Actually I have trouble remembering different cartoon characters because all of their eyes look the same. You know, the big white circles with tiny black dots in the middle. Tell me a cartoon character's name and I'll picture cartoon eyes, but the rest won't slide into place. Unless it's a simpson, because then they get surrounded by a big yellow blob. This is the only flaw I have found with my method of memory.
People in life, well, those eyes are different. Each a different shade, described in as many ways as you can think of. Pretty people seem to have their eyes regarded as jewels, I'm never sure why. i'm sure you might have heard beautiful people's eyes being described as you know, sapphire blue, ruby red and emerald green.
And ugly people get the other side of the stick. Mud brown, rainwater blue, moss green, the more disgusting elements of the earth. You might not have heard blue eyes being described as rainwater though before. That's my description for my old math's teacher. He had horrible eyes.
He had eyes that were such a pale washed out blue that they were almost white, like a small tint of blue sky, passed through a watery raindrop. His eyes constantly looked like he was going to cry. Like any minute another pale raindrop of blue colour would fall and make the reservoir of water in his eyes flood.
But his deathly, black pupils made up for the laughable colours of their surroundings. Small and beady, like the eyes of a hawk. Leading with his hawk-like head he used to skulk , at which point I'd always imagine him with bird feet and talons, over to my desk and say,
"Jobrington! Let me see your book!"
A small bony hand would whip out as I picked up my book to give to him, and then, when I'd handed my maths book over, the small, bony hand would lash back into his towering greatcoat, which was far too big for him.
I remember him skulking back to his desk, with talons attached in my head, with his looming greatcoat fitting over his slight hunchback, looking ever more like a hawk's plumage. Then when he reached his desk, he'd slam my book down on to the table, trying to make as loud a noise as possible to try and scare me and the rest of my class.
In my first year that scared me like I was seeing the devil in person. By our last year me and the whole class just thought, 'fine, be as pathetic as you want sir'. I remember as his hawk eyes descended down on my work like it was his prey, and I used to jokingly pray with my friend that my work wouldn't get soaked from the rainwater dripping from his eyes.
I remember how his eyes, how they ravenously rambled over the pages of complex sums and equations that I'd never use in my life. Almost as if every answer was a matter of life and death, when actually it was a B or a C on a simple maths pass paper.
Then all of a sudden the hawk eyes, would stop feeding on their prey, and grow wide, like the hawk had just choked on a bone. All of a sudden, from under the realms of that greatcoat there'd be a voice,
"JOBRINGTON!"
Again, in my first year I would've leapt out of my chair but by my last, my mate Billy would just have made some sort of joke. I would laugh, but then the skulking, greatcoat plumage hawk would yell,
"This is not a laughing matter!"
Me and my friend would still be chuckling.
"This mistake! This vital mistake, is the difference between a B and a C, Jobrington!"
"Sorry sir, but seeing as I don't have my book, I can't tell what mistake I've made," I'd say at this point.
At which point he'd slam the book down and point at the mistake, and then look away from me like I was supposed to know what I'd done wrong, and like he couldn't bear to look at me.
So, as you can see, maths lessons with the greatcoat, crybaby hawk eyes wasn't exactly great fun. But I must return to my point, I'll never to the day I die, forget his ugly rainwater blue, hawk-like eyes. And never will I forget my mother's eyes, or my father's, or Billy's, or any person I've met. i'll never forget people's eyes and how they reflect their personalities and traits.
But.
But today- I find myself stumped.
Today my mum said to me,
"Anna and her parents are coming round for dinner tonight, go and make yourself look smart!"
And she said that name. Anna. I could familiarise with it, but I couldn't remember her. There was no pair of eyes there. And so I couldn't remember Anna full stop. I was sure of it.
So I tried setting myself a challenge. Try and remember who the heck Anna is before she gets here for tea, was the name of my challenge. I racked my brain, my memory, went through all the thoughts I'd ever had about eyes, like looking through a wardrobe for your favourite shirt. blue? No. Brown? No.
It was hopeless. There was no way I was going to remember. I laughed when I found myself imagining human eyes surrounded by a yellow blob, how a simpson would look in real life. But sadly, I was quite sure that Anna wasn't like that. No, I tried all of my descriptions, racking through a whole new wardrobe. I stopped at one, 'arctic silver', in my mind, 'No, nobody is the colour of a big BMW'.
That was hopeless too.
So do you know what I did?
I sulked, sulked like a toddler who's just been told Christmas is never going to happen again. I'd always been able to remember people by their eyes. The colour, how some have hawk-like eyes, while others have innocent ones. You can tell when somebody is taking the mick out of you because a mocking light lights their eyes up, in a jovial, joking manner.
But this Anna.
whoever she was I just couldn't picture her eyes and therefore I couldn't picture her at all. At that moment all Anna was to me was some cartoon eyes surrounded by a yellow blob.
And then it struck me.
A wonderful yet sorrowful idea.
And Anna's later visit only confirmed it.
I couldn't picture Anna's eyes because she had none.
Anna was blind.