I shall preface my tale of woe with this caveat: I have an eye thing. I cannot stand for anything to be near/in/on/coming toward my eye. Granted I wore contact lenses for years and years, but that was simply due to my own perseverance and a need to get rid of the coke-bottle lenses that pushed my nose down and caused cheek muscle strain from the weight of the frames. (Plus, I wanted to eliminate one of the big three: I had frizzy hair, braces, and goggles to see. Truly a Trifecta for adolescent torture.)
It's been about 5 years since my last eye exam. I'll sit here a minute so that you may lecture me just as the eye doctor did...
Yes, yes, I'll go again next year, provided the memories of today fade quickly and forever.
The exam consists of normal high tech equipment, taking measurements, you know the drill. Then of course they pull over that behemoth of a machine that blows air onto your eyeball with the velocity of paint ball guns. Do you know the machine I'm referring to? It tells you if you have glaucoma or not. I could have told her I didn't, she didn't need to blow me off of a stool to know.
The rest of the exam went as smoothly as it can when one is being tortured. Bright lights are not my friends, and now, sadly, neither is either of the technicians at the local doctor's office. Sigh. I lose so many people that way...
But then the poor doctor arrived! With soft contact lenses the size of Frisbees that she WANTED TO PUT IN MY EYE!!? Hello, Optimist!!
And, bless her, she wanted to put them into my eye herself, cutting me out of the process.
If it hadn't been for the headrest, I believe I would have scored in the high nine's for the backbend I tried to do. My head left a veritable dent in the leather.
But the part I could not help, it was involuntary, was the kick.
Hey, don't judge me.
The doctor was spared from impact because she was to the side of my leg, which went straight up, into the air, and flailed about looking for something relatively firm and human in which to impale. It could not be stopped.
Come to find out, I have TWO eyes! I had to put in BOTH contacts to be evaluated! TWO!
This time, for the other eye, I asked, oh so sweetly, could I possibly try to put it in myself?
She concurred until she saw that no matter how close my finger got to my eyeball, my head and eye were parallel and never the two were to meet. So she, bless her again and again, took the contact and stuffed that thing in my eye again. I remember hearing her say, "Look to the left, open your other eye, try to keep it open, look at me," but in my tragic world of shame, I thought she was saying, "This will scar you for life, you need to run for the door and not stop until you hear the "O Canada" theme song." Turns out it wasn't her talking, it was my fear. Had no idea I had that kind of ventriloquist in my head, but I believed that voice. Believed it.
That was when my Joyner-Kersey gears started up, and I guess I was physically trying to remove myself from the embrace of this Mengele doctor and head to Alberta.
Fortunately, she was bigger than me and restrained me.
She took her measurements, blah blah blah, and then said, CHEERFULLY, "Now we take them out!!!!"
Can you believe this woman's bravery, her fortitude? She is heroic!
I won't bore you with details, but let's say the nightmare of removal ended with her saying, loudly and with feeling, "Don't grab my hand!"
Now I've lost two technicians AND a doctor as Facebook friends.
But the good news: they all made it out of there twenty minutes before noon! They earned that nice long lunch, and I just pray none of them harbor ill will for long, because I had to order the correct lenses, and I have to put them into my own eyes. I have to wear them!! In front of these same people!!! And I have to look happy about it and be pleasant, and not hit anyone, or that bill may mysteriously not be covered by my insurance.
Say a little prayer for us all...
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