Visit to the Optometrist

Yesterday it was a visit to the dentist. Today I went to the Optometrist. The motivation was that,through advancing age, (notice I have been banned from using the word old until I reach 80) one is acutely aware of the diminish state in all areas of ones body. The legs ache, the back has its days and the head, oh the head, where do I start. Well let's start with the eyes and my reason to having my eyes tested.
If I have a bias, it's towards my Optician, my lovely daughter who adds to her list of querulous oldies by taking me in !! Opticians today are a fast food business with gadgets to blow puffs of air in your eyes and then blind you by taking a flash photo of the eyeball, and that's before you are ushered into the "expert". 


Every subjective opinion as to whether that image is 'clearer' or, has more 'definition', it's always a matter of degree. 
It is of course "your degree", "your opinion" based on what you contend you actually see. I use the word contend because every thing is 'conditional' and try as you might the question of, "is that better or worse", is not easily answered.
I happened to use the word, "it seem to have a better contrast" to describe the image I was seeing, but this is outside the vocabulary of the pressured practitioner since it evokes a whole new set of parameters from a "is it clearer or less clear" dialogue they wish to peruse.
In the hands of an expert we are easily brow beaten into submission and try to guess what they would find acceptable.
"I think that's clearer" is a no no. I "think" ! What does that mean. Black or white is the answer they are after with no shades of grey. "Can I see through that other lens, the one before the last one". Why ? "Well I thought it might be clearer". Might, what do you mean might ? The eyes mist over or is it perhaps the brain shutting down as a matter of protection. Look to the right, look to the left, dyslectic one quivers a millimetre the wrong way but in a torment of indecision, not understanding clarity from definition and defiantly not venturing into the realm of contrast one is terrified to look the wrong way. It's the same when asked to look at her right ear and then at her left ear. One is pained to point out that the equipment now obscures that ear. It would be churlish to mention this, it would only diminish the patient in the practitioners eye.
I wonder what they, the practitioners eyes are like. Clearer this way or that, or are all patients just seen as myopic and batty.