This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

William Shakespeare, who I never knew personally, wrote, "The eyes are the windows to your soul." Sounds romantic.

So last week I paid an attractive woman a bunch of money to stick her fingers in my soul. It was just the two of us in a darkened room. Worth every penny.

When she finished, Jessica quietly asked me a question that seemed to lead to the part where she demanded more money.

Her: "Have you ever had a head injury?"

Me: "Why? Am I about to get another one?"

That's when Dr. Jessica Graham of Valley View Vision informed me that I have a large cataract in my right eye. I would need to have it removed before she dealt with the other stuff.

Absent another choice, I tried to look on the bright side.

Me: "Cool. Medicinal weed."

Her: "That's for glaucoma. And this is Utah."

And I had other issues. Apparently the view through the windows to my soul suggested to Dr. Graham that I might not be very good at getting out of the way of high speed stuff like dashboards, fists, explosions, sporting implements, and on several memorable occasions, the ground.

But a cataract? That's a new one. Don't old people get these? What am I doing with one? Hell, I'm just barely into my 60s. I should have at least another two or three good years.

I didn't consider a cataract. I thought the growing haze in my right eye over the past year was the result of miscalculating the ability of an inner tube to launch a basketball filled with root beer.

Rather than tell my wife what happened, I decided to live with it. I could still see through the eye. Not very well, but enough that it didn't seem worth another harangue about chronic immaturity.

But it kept getting worse. Eventually the view through my right eye was foggier than an evening in White Chapel London. So I secretly arranged a meeting with Jessica.

Technology for eyeballs has improved since I first started wearing glasses in the third grade. Back then, it amounted to a plastic spoon, covering one eye at a time with it, and reciting a screwed-up alphabet to a guy in a white coat.

Me: "T R A F — Ha! You know what that spells backward?"

Mom: "You can tape his mouth shut. His father does."

A few weeks later I got a pair of glasses that weighed eight pounds. I used them and the afternoon sun to burn the word [deleted] into the top of my desk.

Today, it's much different. The alphabet is still ridiculous, but Jessica has a machine that takes pictures of the inside of my eye and possibly even my brain. I know because I've heard her mutter, "Hmm, nothing there."

Other machines test the durability of eyeballs, measure peripheral vision and scan for disease. That's how they found my cataract. I have an appointment to get it removed.

Because it involves complicated insurance paperwork, it won't be possible to hide the surgery from my wife. She's going to wonder why I didn't take care of it before. Eventually, she'll put my eye and the basketball episode together.

Take care of your eyes, people. You only have two and they aren't nearly as tough as you think.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get yelled at about growing up.