I was taking Summer for a walk in our front yard (That reminds me, after I write this I need to deal with picking up after Summer) and we watched the highway traffic pass, 100 feet or so up the hill and across the frontage road from our yard.
A semi-truck emblazoned with a beer logo swept by, and I began to sing the old song, “Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone —” when I noticed a pickup truck close behind it, tailgating it seemed, for whatever reason.
OMG, I thought as the two trucks raced by, is this some sort of road-rage incident? I feared for both drivers’ lives.
Then, as they passed further downhill, I realized, no, the two trucks were in different lanes. When I first was examined for glasses, the optometrist realized I was allowing my stronger eye to do all the work, so he installed a prism that coaxed my eyes into working together. The three-dimensional world opened up to me as I discovered at last what this concept of “depth perception” was all about.
What I had perceived as tailgating was simply my eyes falling into their ancient lazy habits and not letting me see that the pickup truck was really a few feet more distant, in the left lane, and not directly behind the semi.
Once I saw from the correct perspective, I understood that neither driver was raging and I was simply watching the smaller truck pass the other, a happily mundane event.
Proper perspective makes a huge difference, hmm?