short sighted

 As he pulls his Crosstrek up to the office parking lot, he places his car into park. 

 

He catches a snippet of NPR. “According to the largest study of its kind, prompting calls to discourage screen time and increase physical activity…”

 

He recalls a memory from his time as a teacher, an iteration of his previous careers. He stored it for times like these.

 

He was engaged in talking about something normal with Kristen, a senior involved with one of his extracurricular activities. He found talking to the female students notably more enjoyable, mainly because of how normal the conversations were. The male students tend to be more stilted in their ability to engage socially, sprinkling their own interactions with nut taps or smirks.

 

In the corner of his field of vision, he sees one of his male English Lit kids make a bee line straight to the teacher desk. 

 

So, is chapter 11 of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on the test?

 

No hello, no greeting, no excuse me, no segue. 

 

Dalton. I’m talking to Kristen. You can see that, right?

 

Dalton looks to his left.  Oh. Hey, Kristen. So, yeah, is it?

 

He would have kind of interaction over and over, stuck in a loop with no resolution. 

 

He gathers his things and gets to his office. The medical assistant is waiting.

 

Hey, your 8AM is already here.

 

Shit. Ok, I’ll be right there. 

 

With current staffing issues, he has gotten used to patients being roomed late. Further, most patients these days arrive late to their meeting. He wonders if it’s partly because they’re used to waiting, so arrive late too, to cut down on their time. But he himself sticks strictly to the allotted time. He used to tell his patients that it’s like a massage. Would you show up 15 minutes late to a 30 minute massage? No, because you get less time then. He stops this, as their annoyance at being reprimanded begins to be reflected in their reviews. And patient care has now been reduced to google reviews. He wonders how providers could rate patients, smirking at the comeuppance. Instead, he shrugs it off knowing the preposterousness of that. 

 

He awakens the computer from its sleep. The previous browser comes up with the Guardian news website.

 

Myopia will affect 740m children and teenagers by 2050, research suggests

 

He opens up Epic, the electronic medical record program that his office uses.

 

Tyler. 15 years old. Anxiety. 

 

He closes the window displaying Epic. He catches the next few sentences of the previous article.

 

More than one in three children and teenagers already suffer from myopia, or shortsightedness, but experts say this number will rise sharply over the next few decades

 

He enters the room to find a acne spotted teen next to his mom. He shakes their hands. The boy avoiding eye contact until he shakes and forces eye contact. 

 

Hey! It’s good to see you guys! He had done a school physical for Tyler a few months ago. He had read that note, and there was no mention of any concern for anxiousness. That was one thing. He tried to avoid labels, particularly with kid. They struggle with “mood” or “anxiousness”, rather than suffer from depression or anxiety. 

 

Tyler is his 10^th teen this week for the same exact thing. The details start to blur. 

 

I don’t want to be here.

 

So, why do you think you’re here?

 

My mom wanted me to come. 

 

He looks at Tyler than at the mom. 

 

Do you think she has a point? 

 

Maybe. 

 

How are you?

 

I’m fine.

 

Why aren’t you great?

 

Tyler looks at him, caught in an honest moment of reflection, having been. Used to tossing aside his parents’ inquiries with a steady stream of “I’m fine”. 

 

Tyler is one of many he has spoken to, a normal, good kid who has social anxiety. He recalls his own anxiety, a small boy forced to skip grades, only making his own social awkardness magnified with a pre-pubescent body in relation to his peers. He ate lunch in a stairwell some times, instead of having to face the social horror of the lunchroom, being forced to find a friendly table or be forced to sit with the outcasts or face the ire of the muscle bound seniors. 

 

He shares this often. This seems to resonate with the teens. 

 

The anxiety blurs with the mood and with the ADHD, either inattention and/or hyperactivity, the symptoms all overlapping. The anxiety is heightened by the parents; forcing the possibility of how much their external worry of their children’s anxiety is heightening whatever is happening. 

 

Instead with Tyler, he indeed is anxious, with minimal friends. COVID did a number; with social technologies “flattening” the world ala Thomas Friedman. But with the worry of external fears, parents forced kids into their homes, never realizing the internet is in some ways a much more dangerous world than the “outside”. From the outside, you can run to a safe place, away from your bullies. One cannot go to a safe place from social media, the bullying endless. 

 

He feels underprepared for these encounters. Limited by training and time, he is forced to give lists of therapy resources. A medication is started; appropriate he believes given how far this anxiousness and mood has progressed for Tyler, with the tears welling up inside a 15 year boy unable to apply a label to his feelings. 

 

He knows that journey of self discovery. But for his own mood issues and social anxiety, it all seems so important at the time. But maybe that’s the thing to learn, that over time, nothing matters, and in some ways you will be free. He thinks how he would never want to trade places with the boy. Then again, maybe in the long run he will.