The difference between:

Federal guidelines are quite explicit: If you can't see better than 20/200, or if your field of vision is less than 20 degrees, you can take the credit. -Slate

And:

You cannot see better than 20/200 with glasses or contact lenses -IRS

Is the difference between my being legally blind and not.

I am not legally blind. In fact, I know someone who was struck blind for a short period, and since I heard about it, the thought of becoming suddenly, actually blind has terrified me.

Rationalization. It was all too easy for me to misread and misread and misread that sentence from the Slate article, because that I was legally blind was one of my longheld (and utterly incorrect) beliefs. The Slate article strengthened it a hundredfold, but I've probably had some version of it since finding out in Driver's Ed that I am "legally blind" without my glasses (but then, I guess anyone with vision worse than 20/40 gets the "corrective lenses" restriction on their license). I cannot read so much as a stop sign without them.

(I also cannot drive very well with a shard of glass in my eye. I remember actually arguing this point with Manney, who did not relish the thought of taking the wheel for me.)

But anyways. Everyone ignore what I said before: none of us qualifies for that tax break.

It's very inconvenient for me that this particular crazy belief has had an effect on the real world. I've already been over my tax returns, and it looks like with my meager earnings, I'd've gotten back all my federal taxes — $10 one year! — without the literally thousands of dollars in fraudulent deductions. So I'm clearly the only one freaking out here: an IRS representative basically told me that they didn't care about this. The IRS has kept its cool. No harm, no foul.

Unfortunately, a MN state employee who I called a few months ago to verify my "legally blind" status in this state did not correct my misconception — that part at least is not my fault — so I still have to correct a whole other set of forms to let Minnesota in on the joke. I can't actually get to those forms right now, but I've been assured that MN also thinks this is no big deal.

Latent foolishness, revealed. This seems to happen about once a year or so; friends with secret-level clearance can petition the central office for access to the list.