There's a chart on my clinic wall. You know the one. Big E at the top, and then the letters get smaller and smaller until they look like ants having a meeting.
I point at the bottom line and say five simple words:
"Read the last line, please."
Here is what Ghana has said back to me.
The memoriser
A young man reads the whole chart perfectly. Top to bottom. No hesitation. Beautiful.
Then I cover one eye and he reads it again, perfectly. Then I turn the chart over to the other side — different letters — and he confidently reads the first side.
My brother, you did not come for an eye test. You came for an exam, and you brought leakage.
The spiritual reader
"Doctor, by His grace, I can see it."
Okay. What does it say?
"I receive it."
That is not a letter, madam.
The negotiator
"Doctor, how many letters must I get before I pass?"
It is not a driving test. There is no passing. If you can't read it, you need glasses. He looked at me like I had told him he failed BECE.
The honest one
An old man — maybe 80 — squints at the chart for a long time. Silence. The whole clinic waits.
Then he says: "I don't know these letters. Is it Ga?"
He couldn't read. Never learned. He had been nodding at newspapers for sixty years so nobody would know.
We switched to the chart with the E's pointing in different directions and he got every single one. Perfect vision. Sharpest eyes I saw that whole year.
That's the thing about this job — and about comedy, if I'm honest. You go in looking for what people can't see, and half the time you find out what they've been hiding.
Then you make a joke about it, and everybody feels a little less alone.
Anyway. Read the last line, please.