Little Stories: Moving My Eyes

Trying to see something that couldn’t be seen.

When I was about five years old, I started noticing that other people were moving their eyes — left and right, up and down. It seemed like a neat trick. I wondered how all those other people had learned to do it, and how I might learn to do it too.

Of course, I was already moving my eyes just like everybody else, but I didn’t realize that. Whenever I looked in the mirror, my eyes were fixed in place, looking straight ahead. Why didn’t they move like everyone else’s?

I mentioned this one day while I was playing with my friend Jonathan at his house. His big sister, Alison, who was probably about 10 or 11 at the time, overheard me and said, “I’ll teach you how to move your eyes, Paul. But only if you’re very, very good.”

I promised I’d be good. Then we all sat down to watch TV. After a few minutes, Alison said, “Paul, go get me a glass of water.” When I told her to get it herself, she said, “Ah-ah-ah — remember, you have to be good. Just for that, I won’t teach you how to move your eyes today. But if you get me the water, I’ll teach you the next time you come over to our house.” I went ahead and got her the glass of water.

Later, when I got home, I told my parents about all of this. They explained that I was already moving my eyes. Like most people, I’d begun moving them when I was about two months old. There was no trick to it, they said — people often did it without even realizing it. Alison had just been trying to take advantage of me.

After they told me this, I went and looked in our bathroom mirror. My eyes were stationary and looking straight ahead, as usual. If I moved them — or if I did something that sort of felt like I was moving them — I couldn’t see them move, because I was no longer looking in the mirror. It was very frustrating!

But then I realized I could move my head while keeping my gaze fixed, like this:

I spent a long time doing this in front of the mirror. (Well, it seemed like a long time, but it was probably just a few minutes.) It wasn’t quite as good as seeing my eyes move back and forth, but I understood on some intuitive level that it was essentially the same thing, so that was enough to satisfy me. I couldn’t have articulated this at the time, but what I was seeing, of course, was that my eyes were indeed moving relative to my head.

Over the next few years, I continued to periodically do the head-swivel thing in front of the mirror. I still do it occasionally today, just because I enjoy reminding myself of this story.

As for Alison, I don’t recall what I said to her the next time I saw her, but I’m pretty sure it would not fall under the category of “being good.”

Little Stories, focusing on oddball memories from my youth, is a recurring feature of Inconspicuous Consumption.

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Big thanks for all the positive feedback on IC’s relaunch. It’s great to be writing again and reconnecting with my audience. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy what you see here. — Paul

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.