I’m going to show you some writing samples. Here. Do any of these make sense to you? Do you recognize them? Are you looking closely? Or are you just humoring me because you think I’m crazy? Well, perhaps I am crazy – but I’m not wrong. Do you know where these characters come from? These lines? You don’t know that these lines are from the very books you’re teaching to your students? What about this one? You do know that this one is from one of your own articles, don’t you? Didn’t you write this part, the part in English? I assure you, you did—the phrase is here, see? Look, is it there or isn’t it? Didn’t you write this? You wrote this, but not this part, right? I know you think I’m crazy, but did I put these words there?

You’re telling the truth, or you’re testing me. In either case, I should explain. Even if I am crazy, crazy people...being crazy doesn’t make everything you say wrong, does it? Plenty of crazy people have made scientifically valid observations, there’s nothing about being crazy that would invalidate careful scientific observations, and crazy people are the ones who see things differently, they see connections that aren’t obvious, and they look in places where no one else would look. Maybe they see things that aren’t there, but maybe they see things that are there.

As I said, at thirteen I acquired true sight. There was, understandably enough, a period of adjustment. Not only did I have trouble getting around, but, worst of all—listen! ...I started to have difficulty reading. When you read, your saccadic blindness helps to suppress the minute streaking that takes place as your eyes scan down the lines of text. Since I no longer had the benefit of that suppression, I could barely read a page without developing a headache. I had to resort to audiobooks to complete my schooling, and my academic standing never did recover after that. Even learning braille was no real help; I had some disaptitude for it, could barely understand it. In the end, I learned to shut my eyes as I moved from one word to the next; that was the best approximation I could come up with, and you wouldn’t believe how tiring it is. Hundreds of blinks just to get through one page. I’m sure you can see how much trouble that would be. So, I often didn’t bother; I just read with my streaking vision and pushed through as best I could before the onset of the inevitable headache. That was how I came to make my great discovery.