Chuck and I were pasting labels on our members’ envelopes to let them know about our annual banquet meeting.  “Look, here’s Mrs. Farrow,” he said.  “What about her,” I mumbled.  “I heard she’s going blind,” he said.  “What?!”  Mrs. Farrow, one of our staunchest members, was in her forties.  “What happened?” I asked Chuck.  He shrugged his shoulders.  “Dunno.”  He paused, then commented, “But I heard that Karl is going to have an eye operation.”  “That’s news to me,” I said.  “Will it affect him coming to the banquet?”  Chuck just said, “Probably.”  For a while, we kept pasting.  We had to finish by nine that evening in order to get the notices sent out the next day with two weeks’ time to prepare.  “Karl’s eye doctor found a cataract,” Chuck said later as we were wrapping up.  “So he’s going to get something called lasik eye surgery.”  I knew what that was; a neighbor of mine had had it done too.  “It doesn’t even hurt,” I said to him.  “You go in early in the morning—depending on which clinic—and you’re out of there by lunchtime.”  “Well, that isn’t what I heard,” Chuck, always the gossiping type, said.  “I read an article in some medical journal that said not only is it a costly procedure, but it hurts your eyes for WEEKS.”  I wondered to myself what medical journal could possibly say something like that.  You would think those publications would try to soften the blow rather than make it difficult or unpleasant for people.  I decided that Chuck probably didn’t have his facts straight.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.