I ADMIT TO BEING 'VISION' CHALLENGED

Hardly a day goes by I don't read or hear something about someone with great 'vision'. The President is supposed to have a great 'vision' for our country. The Republicans are supposed to have a better 'vision' and Warren Buffet just has more 'vision' than Dr.Carter has Liver Pills. I think all of us think we have 'vision' to some extent and many do I'm sure. Those of us who are 'vision' impaired are always asking ourselves how someone knew to put a coat of chocolate around a glob of peanut butter or come up with exactly eleven (11) herbs and spices to coat chicken in before you fried it. We don't like to admit it but other people just have 'vision' and you can't learn it in school.

I have decided I do not have 'vision' after thinking about many of the conclusions I have come to in the past and looking at opinions I have formed over these last 64 years.

First I remember vividly thinking the automobile industry had peaked when the 1957 Chevrolet was introduced. Yea, I figured they would tinker with it a little but never would a car be manufactured that would ever change the basic style. That day, probably in October back in 1956, at Ray Motor Company in Haleyville, was in my opinion at the time the epitome of automobile design efforts, never to be surpassed.

There are many other evidences I should have picked up on over the years that would have confirmed my 'vision' challenged state. Some time in the early 70's Wally Weeks who sold for IBM at the time convinced me that the 'SelectMatic' typewriter would probably be as far as word processing would ever go. In a time of onion skin copies and unforgiving typing, this miracle machine would allow one to back up one letter and remove the mistyped single letter. Was this not as far as typewriting could ever go, Wally convinced me and I bought, knowing I would never need to buy word processing equipment again.

I'm the guy who thought the double bar face mask on a football helmet was the last innovation in facemask, I firmly believed you could never make Coke and Pepsi light, television signals bounced off satellites giving rise to 500 channels, (people couldn't watch the 3 they had at the same time anyway), or telephones that did not utilize land lines.

I'm still working because when computers really took off I never saw that the machines themselves were nowhere near as valuable as the programs running them. I never thought a gazillion applications could be marketed for use by a world starved for the next new gizmo app giving you a score from a game being played on the opposite side of the world or a recipe for cooking ribs in your backyard.

I have long reconciled myself to the fact this world is made up of all kinds of people. Some are givers, some are takers, some are basically good and some without God are basically bad, some are athletes some are bookworms. Some are 'visionary' and I'm not.