I went to high school with a girl who I’ll call Shelly Thompson. Shelly had normal eyesight until maybe 8th or 9th grade, when she was diagnosed with macular degeneration. Her eyesight declined rapidly, I think within a month or so. She was the sweetest girl, and though I wasn’t great friends with her or anything, I occasionally chatted with her while petting her adorable black lab seeing-eye dog, Comet. I asked her once what she missed most since losing her eyesight, and she told me she missed driving. She’d been able to drive for about a week or so before her eyesight started to go really south. She had had enough time to feel the thrill of controlling a machine, the freedom of movement, and not enough time to develop road rage at soccer-mom drivers or annoyance at friends who constantly bum rides without offering to pay for gas.

Poor girl. But she had lots of friends, graduated with honors and an IB diploma, and Comet accompanied her at the graduation ceremony, outfitted with a dog-sized cap and stoll. The last I’d heard of her, she went to some school in Boston, and ended up having to change dogs, because one day, Comet suddenly freaked out in the middle of traffic and left Shelly standing in the middle of a busy street. I think this was maybe three or four years ago that I heard this.

Then last semester, I left my Brain and Pathology class one day, in a hurry to get to the other side of campus, and who should I see but Shelly Thompson herself! On the second floor of Fraser, in Lawrence Kansas, sans seeing eye dog, and apparently not blind! I stopped and stared at her like an idiot for about half a second before hurrying off to class, confused. Afterwards I kept seeing her, or her lookalike, in the hallway for brief seconds in transit from class to class. This girl certainly looked like she had no problem seeing, and she looked exactly like my blind friend from high school.

Now this girl is in my neuroscience class. I’m not sure if I should say anything. If it is Shelly, and she was somehow miraculously cured of her macular degeneration, and also somehow dropped out of Boston and was attending classes at KU, would she even recognize me? It’s not like she would remember what I look like, really. Maybe she happens to have a twin sister, identical in form, excepting the whole genetically inherited vision disorder, of course…um…hopefully we’ll get a chance to do more group work in class, because I’d like some sort of answer to this mystery