Everything seemed fine when I got back to work this morning. This being the first day back after a two-week vacation that felt like an eight-month vacation, my natural paranoia had seeped in just after Christmas. I knew I hadn’t “tidied up” my projects as well as I could have prior to the vacation, and what’s more, I knew I’d left my desk looking like a bomb hit it. There was no real reason to suspect it, but that didn’t keep me from thinking that someone, somewhere was going to give me a stern talking to today. Didn’t happen. Everything was just as I left it — except for the eighteen Christmas presents from various people and facilities I’ve worked with, including champagne, flash drives and two gift certificates that have made me one DS game and a King Kong DVD 3-pk richer. Fuck yeah man.
And then it happened. “Dude, what’s with your eye?”
That’s what the girl I sit next to said, and that’s what the girl I sit next to meant. Apparently, my poor eyes, victims of dirty contact lenses and the residual effects of a weeklong cold, had gone from their normal white to a shade closer to candy apple. Keep in mind, my eyes are always a little red. It’s part of who I am, and I can’t stop it. But this…this was no normal red. My eyes felt absolutely fine, but they looked like they were absolutely bleeding.
So began an hours-long adventure in trying to hide my eyes from the office. Look, they were really red. The kind of red that nobody could just “deal with.” If I struck up a conversation with anyone, there was no way they’d be able to make it through without bringing up this newfound eye trauma. Then again, it wasn’t so much them mentioning my bleeding eyes that concerned me — I just didn’t want anyone seeing ‘em. I didn’t and don’t want to be known as the “guy with the freaky alien bleeding eyes.” I don’t want people calling other people over to look at the “guy with the freaky alien bleeding eyes.”
And the more I write about my eyes, the more they’re starting to hurt. Think I’ll cash out early. Don’t tell anyone I left.
2006 is gonna rock if this keeps up.
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
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Having worn contacts since I was 13, over half my life now, I have several eye stories.
The first year I had my contacts, when I was still wearing the expensive non-disposables, I went to an amusement park when I was at sleep-away camp. There was an observation deck for a water ride, if you stood on it when the ride went down a hill, you got absolutely soaked. We did. The water hit my face so hard, even though my eyes were shut as tightly as I could, one of my contacts was hit and folded up, shooting up above my eyeball. I thought I lost it and was going to have to wear my damn glasses the rest of the week. Fortunately it reappeared.
Another time, I had a bunch of irritation in one eye after putting in my contacts. I couldn’t find any crap on the contact or in my eye, so I just lived with it. The next day, I noticed a small hair at the corner of my eye, where the junk collects at night. I got a hold of it, and pulled, and it kept coming and coming. A whole hair from my head had gotten up in the top of my eyeball, and was all covered in eye junk.
People who have had contacts as long as I have, did you use to use a little "washing machine" type contact case that had a catalyst at the bottom that caused the fluid in the case to bubble, and after a few hours, turn to saline? Remember how much that stuff burned if you tried to put your contacts in too early during the process, or if, god forbid, you picked it up instead of saline accidently and shot some directly in your eye? Let’s just say a certain product of "adult" interaction hurts just about as much if it gets in your eye. In my eye, anyway. Only let that happen once, let me tell you.