Pickles & Dimes

I have tomorrow off, which would normally be heaven, especially with the holiday weekend approaching, but instead will involve having the following conversation for the third time in three months, as I have YET another eye exam to try to figure out why my contacts hate me:

Me: “I’m sorry, but you can’t touch my eye.”

Optometrist: [Tries to touch my eye]

Me, backing away quickly and using wild hand gestures for emphasis: “No, seriously! I cannot have anyone touch my eye. Only I can touch my eye. It’s like Excalibur that way.”

Optometrist, now annoyed: “Let me just place this contact on your eye.”

Me, panicking: “You can’t! I get violent when people try to touch my eye.”

Optometrist: [Touches my eye]

Me: [Punches optometrist in the throat]

I absolutely cannot stand it when people touch my eye. Gaaaah. I feel like punching someone in the throat just thinking about it. There’s no way I could ever have Lasik. Not if it involves being awake – they’d have to totally sedate me. You know, to avoid all the throat punching.

ANYway, our house party went great. We had over 30 people there and it was so much fun. We overestimated the amount of hot dogs we’d need and underestimated the amount of potato chips. Which is too bad, because I could go for some chips right now, and all we have to eat is seventeen thousmillion hot dogs.

I’m in a great mood today, even though I am typing this one-eyed. I had to remove my left contact because it was using its fingernails to claw itself off my eyeball. After doing so, I discovered I had forgotten my glasses at home.

I remembered the case for them though.

Would you like to touch my eye? I need to punch something.

I finally got new contacts that don’t spontaneously adhere to one another when removed from my eyes. These new ones can be worn for up to 6 days without having to take them out, so of course, I planned on wearing them until forced by gunpoint to remove them, but the contacts had other plans. I’ve already had three pairs in my eyeballs since last Monday and today my left eye is completely blurry. Which is great when your job consists of, you know, proofreading documents comprised of tiny type.

I’ve learned that although these contacts do not bind themselves to each other in compromising positions, I cannot rub my eyes ever when wearing them, as the contacts then get bored and relocate to inconvenient areas of my eye sockets to do further long-term damage to my vision. Also, it appears that they have enlisted the assistance of my eyelashes, as I have removed approximately 32,779 of them from my left eye.

I am becoming increasingly concerned with lash-baldness.

Dear Bausch & Lomb,

I am writing to you concerning your product, the SofLens®. A year ago, my optometrist casually changed my prescription to this brand, and myself, not being the overly observant type, merely noticed a difference in the box packaging and thought, “Huh.”

However, it did not take even this non-astute person long to realize that there is a serious flaw in the design of your product. When one removes the contact from one’s cornea, it immediately welds itself into a tiny, mangled ball. A ball that can be likened to a wad of congealed chewing gum – not bubble gum, but the nasty Wrigley® stuff that sticks to you when attempting to frantically free your fingers from it.

So what you end up with is no longer a mild-mannered, blue-tinted concave-shaped contact, but rather, a crumpled mass of extremely fragile material. To attempt to relinquish the death-grip the contact has on itself, one has to use their fingernails in a feeble attempt to re-open the contact. As you may or may not guess, this results in a beautifully jagged tear straight down the middle of the product. I can solely attribute my 5:1 ratio for contact usage per eye (left vs. right) in this manner. Why this product defect affects only the left contact, I cannot say.

Your Web site touts the following false statements benefits:
* Exceptional vision
* All day comfort
* Easy handling
* Easy adaption

While I disagree with all four selling points, the one I take the most exception to is the “easy handling” statement. If by “easy handling” you mean having to pry the contact apart as if it is an alien organism hellbent on suctioning itself into a wad and sucking my retina out of my eyeball, then yes, that statement is correct. If you mean “easy handling” in the fact that one has longer than .008 seconds to place the contact into a proper saline-filled receptacle before it glues itself shut, then sadly, your assertion is grossly misleading.

I hope your company will spend a few more R&D dollars in the future to remedy this defect. As for myself, I will be saving my money to get the LASIK® procedure.

Come in, Control Tower. I repeat, come in Control Tower.

This is Control Tower. What is your situation?

We’ve got a non-functioning right orbital lens cover.

That can’t be! It’s brand new.

It is brand new, sir. But I assure you it is depositing a grainy substance onto the retinal surface.

Sonofabitch.

The visionary photographs we are attempting to upload to the central brain repository are blurry.

Have you attempted to uninstall the lens cover and reboot?

Affirmative. Repeated installations have proven unsuccessful. What other options are available for utilization?

There is still the manual lens cover.

Aw, Christ.

Even though it’s bulky and the peripheral vision capacity will be severely limited, it is your only hope if you want to complete your mission.

{long pause} Then that’s what we’ll do.

Godspeed, gentlemen.

(In other words, my contacts suck.)