When I arrived home from vacation, I discovered two tiny frogs that had glued themselves to the two-step stair I had loaded into the camper, providing them free rides all the way from the campground. They now reside somewhere in my un-mowed grass.
The frogs had stowed away just outside of my normal, non-froggy field of vision, or I would never have given them this free ride, considering the possible hazards to their health.
How much else lies just outside the field of my usual vision? If I tilt my vision by just a hair, sort of cockeyed, there’s no telling everything that I would see.
It’s all a matter the angle of our sight – the tilt of our vision. The gift of Vision is the ability to see cockeyed.
A cockeyed restaurateur with a zany business plan drew my attention. A store had fallen victim to the stressed economy. In its place, a restaurant emerged. Where goods once stood on display in the curved front display windows, patrons of the store-turned-coffee shop now sipped mochas, lounging within their wrap-around glassed-in dining area with a prime view of the street-side happenings.
The cockeyed entrepreneur wasn’t done yet. Tables for two take up a lot of real estate on an outside patio; instead, why not use long, narrow ironing boards with stools? So he did. Folks drifting in to dawdle over coffee need something to read. So he furnished them shelf-fuls of hardcover books tucked in each wall of the shop; there’s always something new to fuel customer imaginations.
A growling stomach demands that a decision be made. Whether to have the “Thoreau” sandwich, featuring hummus, pepper jack cheese and cucumber? Or to indulge with the “Albert Camus” seared tuna, hardboiled egg and new potatoes? It’s a much more refined and cockeyed approach than saying, “I’ll have your Number Three, please.”
Serving lattés in wrap-around display windows and noticing hitchhiking frogs were both outside of my view. Time to tilt the head and enjoy the Cockeyed Vision.