Filed under: General
My memories of the time when I used to wear contact lenses are a little blurry. It’s been a long time. It was well before the days of throw-away lenses.
The kind I had required daily maintenance. Cleaning. Dropping on the dirty floor. Finding. Cleaning. You know, maintenance.
I’d have to soak the lenses in enzymatic cleaner overnight. Then, in the morning, I would wash them insuffieciently with saline solution and put them back into my eyes. This would sting. A lot.
I also vaguely recall some sort of liquid soap I had to put on them and wash off. I’m sure I got that in my eyes too. If it would hurt, I would put it on the lenses and then into my eyes…It was my way.
When I look back on that time, it seems that I could’ve just simplified the ritual by eliminating the use of the lens as a medium for getting the chemicals into my eyes. Pouring the soap directly onto my eyeballs would’ve been a quicker, more efficient way of handling the matter, but I was young then and full of pretense.
Then there was the eye dryness. I used eyedrops constantly. If I didn’t have drops for them, the contacts got angry and scratched me. They were like vicious cats with sharp claws resting on my pupils. These were the “soft” contacts, mind you. I shudder to think of the alternative.
Also, during this time my eyes were perpetually and cartoonishly bloodshot. Remember the old Roadrunner cartoon where the Coyote falls into enzymatic cleaner? My eyes looked just like that.
So, during these sensitive teenage years, rather than getting compliments on how great I looked without glasses, I’d get greetings more along the lines of “Have you been crying?” Or, occasionally, “Got any weed?”
Oh, I was attractive.
Needless to say, I started wearing glasses again mainly as a safety precaution. If some loathsome fiend should try to sneak up and poke a contact into my eye, my glasses will serve as a barrier to foil his attempt.
You don’t even want to know how quickly I interrupt an optometrist who tries to suggest contacts. Let me tell ya, he’s a mighty fast talker if he can get that “con” syllable out.
If he’s persistent and continues his spiel after I say I don’t want contacts, I respond as I would to any potential threat - I assume the fetal position and cry until the danger is gone.
So, yeah, maybe I’m a funny lookin’ critter in my pink sunglasses with the little gems on the side, but you’d appreciate the look a little more if you had seen what I looked like when I tried being pretty.