Tried contact lenses for the first time today, and I think I’ll like them once I get over the AUGH-AUGH-OMGWTFBBQSAUCE-THERE-IS-SOMETHING-TOUCHING-MY-EYE. They apparently come free with the Image Optometry Eye Exam + Glasses package. Really it’s an Eye Exam + Glasses + Contacts Fitting + Contacts package. (All for $90! I should find out if I get future discounts for talking about how awesome they are. Seriously.) I thought I would have issues with them, always having been nervous with the idea, but the fellow at the shop was incredibly reassuring, treating the topic with such aplomb that I felt like a country mouse for doubting at all.
After half an hour of fumbling and learning how to properly poke my eye, (AUGH), I couldn’t master how to put them in, so the man at the optometrists put the first one in for me, which was quick, painless, and completely bizarre. It took, like, a millisecond.
Pow
and that was it.
I had a thing on my eye.
I didn’t even have time to react.
Wearing only one contact was very strange, as everything was both clear and not clear, and if it weren’t for the many, many drug sequences I’ve seen in movies, it would have played havoc with my sight. As it was, it looked, as far as I can tell, like mescaline, and I was fine. The second one was much easier, as then I could see what I was doing, (AUGH AUGH), a fact that blew my tiny mind a little bit all by itself, given I was still in elementary school the last time I saw myself clearly in a mirror.
Once they were in, I could barely stand, as the sheer amount of detail in the world was overwhelming. I had periphery! The carpet was polka-dot! There were individual raindrops outside! EVERYTHING HAD EDGES, NOT JUST THE MIDDLE OF WHERE I LOOKED. I tried walking around a bit and bumped into almost everything possible, because without the world warping effect of glasses, I wasn’t sure how far away anything was. The worst moment, however, was far more personal. Considering my face properly in a mirror for the first time since grade five almost broke my heart. I had hoped, when I was younger, to grow up to look like a far happier person.
Continuing onward, I was then supposed to learn how to take the contacts out. I say supposed to, because I just couldn’t figure it out. I was quick to learn how to touch my eyes and how to push the contacts around, (a terrible feeling), but actually lifting them up off the surface was a trick I did not master. Once again, the nice fellow working at the store helped me out, and popped them out for me as easy as blinking, as if I had not just spent fourty minutes struggling like a child with the top of a pickle jar.
The practice ones came home with me, and there they are, sitting accusingly on a shelf in my bedroom, as I muster up the courage to try again. (Probably tomorrow, once my eyes stop feeling bruised from how much I poked them today.) I’ve decided that I likely shouldn’t try to learn them outside of office hours, in case I need to pop out to a glasses store and ask someone behind the counter for help, but I’m pretty sure that once I catch the knack of reliably putting them in and taking them out again, I’ll be glad to have a pair. Really, no matter how steep the learning curve, I love the fact that once they are in, I CAN SEE THROUGH TIME.
