When I was a kid and my Mom wanted me to go to sleep, she’d take my glasses away.

I’ve had poor vision my whole life.

I can still remember the fight, full of tickles and laughter, that preluded the inevitable- blindness.

Most of my upbringing was just me and Mom, and Gramma Bev. I slept in the same bed as my mom until I was eleven, because most of the time it was just us. There was a TV in Mom’s room. She didn’t mind me listening to it while I drifted off.

But in the space between her taking my glasses and her coming to bed, I had learned a trick. If I put my pink blanket, made of soft waffle material with silk edges, over my head and focused one eye through the natural holes of the fabric– I could see! I watched Golden Girls with blanket over my head from 1998 to 2002.

I wish I knew then how lucky I was to be a kid alive at that time. I wish my biggest worry at night was still getting caught watching Golden Girls through a blanket over my head.