I am the only person in my family to suffer from any form of visual impairment.
A late bloomer into the world of vision correction, even I was a 20/20 kid up until my junior year in high school. I couldn't see the board in my AP History class so I ended up getting glasses that were only necessary when driving, going to the movies, or reading notes off of a chalkboard. Turns out, when you're 17, those are the bulk of your activities. So the glasses became a permanent fixture until my senior year when I finally got contacts. It took me half an hour to slide that first disk of plastic on to my uncooperative eyeball. Eyeballs prefer to be left alone and they don't take kindly to fingers being jabbed at them.
I've been perfectly content with my contacts for the last seven years and I only rarely wear my glasses. I hate glasses. When I was a kid, all I ever wanted were glasses, crutches and braces. I have no idea why. Most kids who were unfortunate enough to have all three probably had loftier goals than I. Glasses are nothing more than an obstruction. Granted they clear up your vision, but in doing so, they confine your line of sight to a small, rectangular box. In order to see everything in my range of vision, I have to move my head in circles, where un-bespectacled people can simply dart their eyes around. The lenses fog up if your head is warm or you breathe into a hot beverage. That is annoying. Suffice it to say, I never wear my glasses.
Until now.
I didn't want to have to wear my glasses again, but I had my reasons. They were twofold:
1. I ran out of contact lenses
2. My eyes began to develop some unsightly redness around the irises.
My overly concerned brother demanded that I describe the phenomenon to him...as if he could properly diagnose me. He is not a doctor. He is simply, like I said, overly concerned. Anyway, it resulted in this diagram I drafted with Microsoft Paint:
I broke down and scheduled an appointment with an eye doctor in Brooklyn. I felt like a grown up – choosing doctors, making appointments. These are grown up things. I didn't even call my mom first.
I arrive at the doctor's office eager to clear up the redness, order new contacts, and maybe even snag a pair of newer glasses that I would then proceed to never wear. The two ladies behind the glass counter laiden with pairs of glasses hailed from some sort of eastern European country.
"Vhat can vhe help you vith?" The bleached blonde Russian-esque lady asked. I told her I had an appointment - she checked me in, I filled out the forms, and waited for the doctor. Business as usual.
The doctor I ended up seeing was cordial, but lacked a certain bedside (or should I say rolly chair-side manner). She was quick and to the point. I suffer from some psychological inability to explain to people exactly what I want/feel in situations like this. So I sounded like a rambling idiot trying to tell her what was going on with my eyes. This also tends to happen when I get my hair cut. I blabber on about what I think my hair should look like, but I never actually manage to describe the picture in my head and I end up looking ridiculous.
She had no time for my witty quips (read: stupid optometry puns), so I locked it up and tried to follow all of her guidelines. I scampered off to the bathroom to try on the new pair of sample contacts she supplied me with. It was all downhill from there. I managed to successfully put one new contact in my eye and throw out the old one. On my next try I accidentally tossed out the NEW contact. I stared at it, sitting there on a pile of tissue in the waste basket, too stunned to make any rational decisions. I decided to throw out the other old contact and go back to the scary doctor to ask for a replacement.
I arrive at the doctor's office eager to clear up the redness, order new contacts, and maybe even snag a pair of newer glasses that I would then proceed to never wear. The two ladies behind the glass counter laiden with pairs of glasses hailed from some sort of eastern European country.
"Vhat can vhe help you vith?" The bleached blonde Russian-esque lady asked. I told her I had an appointment - she checked me in, I filled out the forms, and waited for the doctor. Business as usual.
The doctor I ended up seeing was cordial, but lacked a certain bedside (or should I say rolly chair-side manner). She was quick and to the point. I suffer from some psychological inability to explain to people exactly what I want/feel in situations like this. So I sounded like a rambling idiot trying to tell her what was going on with my eyes. This also tends to happen when I get my hair cut. I blabber on about what I think my hair should look like, but I never actually manage to describe the picture in my head and I end up looking ridiculous.
She had no time for my witty quips (read: stupid optometry puns), so I locked it up and tried to follow all of her guidelines. I scampered off to the bathroom to try on the new pair of sample contacts she supplied me with. It was all downhill from there. I managed to successfully put one new contact in my eye and throw out the old one. On my next try I accidentally tossed out the NEW contact. I stared at it, sitting there on a pile of tissue in the waste basket, too stunned to make any rational decisions. I decided to throw out the other old contact and go back to the scary doctor to ask for a replacement.
“Excuse me. Hi, yes, I seem to have thrown out the new contact instead of the old one. I don’t know what came over me.”
She huffed, flipped her folder closed, and informed in a dead pan voice that she didn’t have any other pairs and that I should just put my old contacts back in.
Oh, you mean the ones I just tossed into the trash in order to destroy all evidence of my original folly? Sure, you got it. I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I’m an idiot and destroyed three of the four contacts she had left me in charge of. So I returned to the scene of the crime, popped out the one good lens I had and begrudgingly put my glasses back on.
I avoided her stern gaze as I left the office to finish things up with the Russian ladies. My new contacts were on their way, but my journey to healthy eyes was far from over.
