A man and a woman were arguing loudly as Walter skated past Violin Park, and glancing at them, he thought, Big noses on the two of them—his hat’s too small. And he could almost hear Georgie asking him, But how are their noses different, Walter? What kind of hat is it? Look, Walter, look. It was ever so difficult, though, for Walter to do that, to look with such scrutiny. A face or a building, a crowd or a streetcar, a decorated Christmas tree, whatever it was that he happened to see, Walter would remark only its most striking features; the finer points of a thing hardly ever made an impression on him. He would see a man’s bald dome and heavy chest, never the man’s cuff links—unless they were diamond and sparkled. His father, the eye specialist, probably would’ve called it a form of myopia, but Walter, as as he’d already told Georgie, called it vision and deemed it a gift. He saw things simplified.
–Tom De Haven, Funny Papers, p. 139
