So here’s a tip… If you wear daily disposable contact lenses (the kind you wear only once, then throw away), and are close to running out of them, ORDER MORE NOW!!! Don’t wait, like I did, until you have only 5 sets of lenses left. Because, for those of you unfamiliar with daily disposable contact lenses, having only 5 pairs left means that I have only 5 days of vision left. And then I’m blind. At least to anything farther away than the tip of my nose.
What’s that saying? Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses? Really, though, it’s not that. I’m married, so I’m not exactly looking for guys to make passes at me. It’s that I’ve always hated wearing glasses. Vanity is only part of it. The main reason is that they get so dirty, so fast. I think every pair of glasses I’ve ever owned were nothing more than dust and fingerprint magnets. I could clean them until the lenses were nearly invisible and would fool a bird, if one was bent on flying directly at my eyes. Meaning, a bird wouldn’t even notice the sparkly clear lenses until they hit them beak first, similar to the way they sometimes fly into the shiny clean glass on a sliding patio door. Like in the Windex commercials. But truly, not 2 seconds after I put on my freshly cleaned glasses, they are covered in dusty fingerprints, even though nobody has touched them! And I have to clean them again. And again. All day long. It’s enough to drive me insane, so I try to avoid wearing them at all. And I stick with my contact lenses.
When I realized I had hardly any left (and what was I doing anyway, that I hadn’t noticed this earlier?), I went and ordered more, and was informed by the smiling technician at the eye place, that it would take 7 to 10 business days for my new contact lenses to come in. “But I only have 5 days of lenses left!” I cried, to no avail.
And so I’m left to ration my remaining 5 pairs of lenses over the coming days. Each day, until my new lenses come in, I have to decide if the day is special enough to spend my contacts on, or if I should settle for my glasses.
I feel a bit like the character Elaine Bennis in the “Spongeworthy” episode of Seinfeld where she where she was rationing her supply of birth control sponges because they’d been taken off the market and she couldn’t buy any more. Each time she was with a man she’d debate whether he was Spongeworthy or not. My internal debate runs through a decisional flow chart in my mind and goes something like this: “What’s the weather like outside?; Am I running today?; Will I be out in public?” (that vanity thing again). If it’s sunny, I most assuredly want to wear my contact lenses so that I can wear my sunglasses. Because if I don’t wear sunglasses when it’s sunny out, I’m literally, blinded by the light. I believe the technical term is photophobia . I think (and hope) the condition is caused, in my case, by nothing more than years of being a contact lens wearer and not by some horrible undiagnosed eye disease. I’ve mentioned it to my eye care professional, who has been decidedly unconcerned about it. Still, I sometimes wonder…
If it is sunny and I opt to wear my glasses, then I have to don a pair of sunglasses as well. Over my glasses. I’ve never invested in any kind of clip-on sunglasses, because I never actually wear my glasses, so when I need them, I’m stuck wearing two pairs of glasses at once, and looking like a complete “eight-eyes” dork. If I’m going running, then I need to wear my contacts to avoid that annoying problem of “sweaty glasses sliding down your nose with every step you take” (if it’s sunny out, I wear a visor to shield my eyes). If I’m going out in public, as previously stated, I’m loathe to wear them.
If I’m not running, or if it’s cloudy out, I can get away with wearing my glasses alone. That was the situation yesterday. Even though I was going out in public, (I had to go to work, after all) it was cloudy and I wasn’t running. I’d evaluated things and decided it was best to save my contacts and wear my glasses. Two out of the three points being in my glasses’ favor.
I got ready for work, I cleaned my glasses (which instantly got covered in fingerprints and dust), I put them on, and got in the car to drive to work. All was fine until I got to the tunnel that I have to drive through each day. You know how tunnels are. They are cut through mountains, or under bodies of water, neither of which let in much in the way of natural light. And this tunnel, like most, is pretty dark. Dark enough inside that when you are wearing sunglasses, you have to remove them so you aren’t blinded by the darkness (unless you’re Corey Hart, who obviously doesn’t have a problem with that). And that’s what I did. Forgetting that I was wearing my eyeglasses, because I never wear them, I ripped them off my face and tossed them to the seat, thinking they were my sunglasses, and I’d put them back on once I came out of the tunnel on the other side. Only that’s when I realized that I couldn’t see! Not a thing past the tip of my nose. Because I’d tossed my eye glasses, not my sunglasses, onto the seat! I groped the seat madly, like I’d suddenly been transformed into a teenage boy who’d found himself in a cramped closest with the girl of his dreams and his one and only chance to cop a feel. I guess in reality it only took a few seconds (although it felt much longer) for my hands to brush the ear piece, my fingertips to spot the lenses, and I was able to put my glasses back on. I could see again, even with the annoying fingerprints. Then I emerged from the tunnel into what can only be interpreted as a cruel joke from on high: the rain had stopped, the clouds had parted, and the sun was shining brightly. And then I found myself blinded by the light
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