Eye! Eye! Mr Caller

Square dancing is fun. It must be. All those car stickers wouldn't lie.

It's also good exercise. It may even be the best kind there is, because while we're dancing and enjoying ourselves we don't even realise how much benefit we're getting from it. It isn't only a wonderful aerobic work-out, it's great for flexibility—and considering the aging joints of most square dancers that's no small bonus.

Of course it's not just the joints that deteriorate. So do our ears.

Hearing aids are a problem since they amplify all the background noises in the hall as well as the caller's voice and music. The confusion of sounds make a lot of us reluctant to use them at all. Fortunately, since the advent of wire-less head sets and plug-in transmitters even people with severe hearing difficulties can now dance with confidence.

And visual problems have always been with us. Are you old enough to remember the World War II song, The Quartermaster's Store? It has a line that says, "My eyes are dim I can not see, I have not brought my specs with me."

If you forget your specs, poor vision won't stop you dancing. You can always grope your way around the square—being careful to grope only in the most proper places. That's not really a problem.

Unless you're a caller.

A couple of months ago I was dancing with a caller who has reached that part of later middle age where the eyes begin to fail. He complained that if he uses his specs to read the cue sheet he can't keep an eye on the dancers.

And there was the solution. Not both eyes, just one. He only needs to keep one eye on the dancers.

That's when I realised that there was a business opportunity here and I'm going into partnership with my local neighbourhood optician. We're going to manufacture monocles. They've been out of vogue for a while now but we've come up with a wrinkle to make them popular again. We plan to produce twin monocles of different magnification so that if the caller needs to really focus on the cue sheet and the dancers at the same time he can wedge one into each eye.

We'll make a fortune.

I tried to get the optician to call a few numbers just to get a feel for the situation but he wouldn't do it. He said he didn't want to make a spectacle of himself.