Rite of Passage
When I was little I remember looking up, dirty little hands resting on the lip of the bathroom counter top, watching my mom dip her finger into a little pool of clear liquid, the pad reemerging with a concave disc. Fluid dripping down her hand and hitting the cool stone, she pulled down her eyelid and placed the glass like dome right onto her eye.
"Can I try?" I would ask. (Or if nothing else thought.) She wouldn't let me and thankfully I didn't try to create my own contact lenses with saran wrap or cellophane off the cigarette wrappers my parents used to peel off the packs at cocktail hour and I would fill with tonic water. Tonic water that tasted of stale tobacco.
Instead I waited about 25 years to try the real thing.
My vision has been deteriorating for years and I have gone through maroon cat-eyed reading glasses and sparkly blue 60s era frames that my ancient optometrist found in the back of a rusting cabinet that hadn't been cleaned out in decades. I had reading glasses for a few years, then miraculously didn't need them, then could barely drive at night with fuzzy stoplights and blurry freeway signs cramping my style. So I've gone through a couple of nerdy cool frames that I pull out at movies, in the car, or if I'm feeling especially erudite and artsy typing away at a coffeeshop with the Smiths playing over the speakers.
But glasses don't work so well underwater. And it would be nice to be able to wear sunglasses on watch and still be able to make out ships. Or at night to be able to scan the water without squinting if I can't seem to find my glasses that perhaps fell into the water during the day.
So yesterday I found myself at the optometrists, surrounded by frames, saying to the saleswoman, "No, I've never worn them. But you just, I don't know, pop them in, right?"
Cut to me poking myself in the eye as the bendy lens folds around my fingertip on my 20th try.
"I think my eye is too small. I have small eyes."
"We have children coming in here all the time. They can do it."
Squinty steely looks from me as she walks away.
I want to cry. Oh wait I am. Because I am poking myself in the eyeball with my finger. My mascara is smeared all over my lid as the saleswoman with abnormally large (read: easy to put contacts in) eyes tells me to really pull the upper lid up and the lower lid down. And don't blink. And don't put the lens in the wrong way. And I need to open up my eye more.
"This just isn't working!" I am frustrated and want to throw the cute little case with L and R emblazoned on the cute little covers across the fucking store.
"Just keep trying. I can tell I'm making you nervous. I won't watch." What she could tell is that I was about to rip her bloody head off for telling me it was no big deal, that it would come naturally after the first time, that she could do it without even prying apart her heavily mascara-ed eyes.
"I think I got it." Red and smeared with black, my eye suddenly contained a contact. And I could read the sign across the street from the shop.
Wow, I thought. Now I get why people go through this shit.
The second one went in a little more quickly, but if I had known that taking the suckers out required me pinching at my cornea, ("Just like this," she crowed as she science fiction movie like pulled the slimy circle onto the white of her eye and it reminded me of peeling a grape but it was her eye) I would have left it out.
I walked out of the store eyes slightly stinging but being able to see down the street, able to read what the smoothie king menu said, able to tell whether the kid in the stroller on the other side of the fountain was smiling or pouting.
But I need to remember to ask my mom if those thick hard lenses of twenty years ago were as much of a pain in the ass.
At least they're better for my eyes than Saran Wrap.
"Can I try?" I would ask. (Or if nothing else thought.) She wouldn't let me and thankfully I didn't try to create my own contact lenses with saran wrap or cellophane off the cigarette wrappers my parents used to peel off the packs at cocktail hour and I would fill with tonic water. Tonic water that tasted of stale tobacco.
Instead I waited about 25 years to try the real thing.
My vision has been deteriorating for years and I have gone through maroon cat-eyed reading glasses and sparkly blue 60s era frames that my ancient optometrist found in the back of a rusting cabinet that hadn't been cleaned out in decades. I had reading glasses for a few years, then miraculously didn't need them, then could barely drive at night with fuzzy stoplights and blurry freeway signs cramping my style. So I've gone through a couple of nerdy cool frames that I pull out at movies, in the car, or if I'm feeling especially erudite and artsy typing away at a coffeeshop with the Smiths playing over the speakers.
But glasses don't work so well underwater. And it would be nice to be able to wear sunglasses on watch and still be able to make out ships. Or at night to be able to scan the water without squinting if I can't seem to find my glasses that perhaps fell into the water during the day.
So yesterday I found myself at the optometrists, surrounded by frames, saying to the saleswoman, "No, I've never worn them. But you just, I don't know, pop them in, right?"
Cut to me poking myself in the eye as the bendy lens folds around my fingertip on my 20th try.
"I think my eye is too small. I have small eyes."
"We have children coming in here all the time. They can do it."
Squinty steely looks from me as she walks away.
I want to cry. Oh wait I am. Because I am poking myself in the eyeball with my finger. My mascara is smeared all over my lid as the saleswoman with abnormally large (read: easy to put contacts in) eyes tells me to really pull the upper lid up and the lower lid down. And don't blink. And don't put the lens in the wrong way. And I need to open up my eye more.
"This just isn't working!" I am frustrated and want to throw the cute little case with L and R emblazoned on the cute little covers across the fucking store.
"Just keep trying. I can tell I'm making you nervous. I won't watch." What she could tell is that I was about to rip her bloody head off for telling me it was no big deal, that it would come naturally after the first time, that she could do it without even prying apart her heavily mascara-ed eyes.
"I think I got it." Red and smeared with black, my eye suddenly contained a contact. And I could read the sign across the street from the shop.
Wow, I thought. Now I get why people go through this shit.
The second one went in a little more quickly, but if I had known that taking the suckers out required me pinching at my cornea, ("Just like this," she crowed as she science fiction movie like pulled the slimy circle onto the white of her eye and it reminded me of peeling a grape but it was her eye) I would have left it out.
I walked out of the store eyes slightly stinging but being able to see down the street, able to read what the smoothie king menu said, able to tell whether the kid in the stroller on the other side of the fountain was smiling or pouting.
But I need to remember to ask my mom if those thick hard lenses of twenty years ago were as much of a pain in the ass.
At least they're better for my eyes than Saran Wrap.
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