Monday 12 January 2009

Entry Number 100 and An Eyeful Tale

It is 7:23am and I’m standing in the bathroom trying to get my contact lenses in before heading out to work. The lens for the right slips in with aplomb but when it comes to the left one it does not sit well. I begin to blink which is an indication that my eye is screaming ‘get this out of here before I turn red’. I oblige and pull out the lens but before managing to bring it to the safety of my open palm it slips from my finger and begins to descend all the way down into the open toilet. Game over. Looking into the toilet I can see this lucid shape floating merrily along in loo water. I turn to my spare lenses but there are none that was my last set until my new batch arrive the end of this month. There was no point having the right one in either because it was like the Olsen twins, it doesn’t feel right when you see only one.

This occurrence shaped my whole day and not for the better. Only being able to see about two metres in front of me meant that I basically blanked everyone at work because I just didn’t recognise them causing the below to happen.

Email 10:02am

Them: What’s up?

Me: Nothing much just shattered. You good?

Them: Seriously, what’s wrong? Have I upset you?

Me: What are you on about?

Them: You blanked me when I walked past you this morning by the library.
Wanted to know what I’ve done wrong.

Me: Lol, don’t worry about it. I haven’t got any contacts in so I can’t see anything
today. Sorry if it looked like I blanked you.

Them: So you are sure nothing is wrong?

Me: Yeah.

Them: You aren’t feeding me crap because you blanked me?

Me: No. Relax, I didn’t intentionally blank you. I have not got my contacts in so
I can’t really see anyone within a two metre radius.

Them: But I was within 2 metres.

Me: Gosh, it’s an estimate. I’ve got a meeting. Speak to you later…

I didn’t have a meeting but I wanted to get out of that email conversation as soon as possible as I was beginning to get irate. It did however highlight just how important it was that I got a new pair of contacts as soon as possible. Unfortunately this was not as easy as I thought.

Phone conversation around 10:40am

Me: Hi, look my one of my contacts has fallen into the toilet and I haven’t got a
spare. Can you send me out a new set please?

Them: What type of account do you have sir?

Me: Erm, I don’t know. The one where I get lenses every couple of months.

Them: What’s your reference number?

Me: I don’t know. I haven’t got my reference number on me but surely you can
identify me from my date of birth, name and address.

Them: What’s your date of birth, name and first line of you address?

I proceed to tell him these details.

Them: That is all correct. Ok, how can I help you sir?

Me: What? Look I told you a few minutes ago I need you to send me a spare set
of contacts.

I hear the computer tapping for a few moments.

Them: Right you are due to have your next batch delivered at the end of this
month.

Me: I need them now, I can’t really see and it’s causing me havoc.

Silence

Them: Right… I cannot authorise this release. Can I call you back later after I
have spoken to someone?

Me: Yes!

Them: I will contact you on …

Me: Yeah that’s right. Now hurry up.

Click

Slightly frustrated at hitting a brick wall I spent the rest of the morning by my desk so that I didn’t encounter many people. The last thing I wanted to do was get more people emailing me. Around 11:30 I get a phone call back from the guy at the contact lens company who confirms he spoke to someone and that a set will be sent later today. A slight relief spreads through me knowing that I will not have to endure much more of this eye squinting and carefully trying to work out who people are by their movements, body shape and skin colour. Still there was time to offend someone else before the day was out. This time it was at the city when my phone buzzes with a message.

Them: Why’d you blank me?

Me: Soz, I can’t see I haven’t got my contacts in. How are you?

And they never replied. Ah well, I can’t wait to see properly again.

In other news, this is my one hundredth entry on here. I can’t really believe it but Blogger informed me this evening when it displayed all my other 99 entries. Well, I’m not sure if I’ll reach 200 but I’m really pleased at reaching this milestone considering it spawned from a drunken conversation many moons ago.

3 comments:

asdf said...

Good work on reaching 100 - hope you do get to 200. I'm on 89, and have noticed I've done multiples of 8 each year - with 8 times as many in 2007 than 2008. Very shameful when there in B&W. Or blue and white, to be more accurate.

Person X sounds like a hard one to convince. Maybe one lens in and a few pirate jokes might have softened the blow.

!llegally blonde said...

Congrats congrats on your "centennial entry"!

I'm sorry you had to go through a blurry day (both literally and figuratively. It's good though that the company will be sending you a batch soon. Don't you keep a pair of glasses just in case something like this happens? Seeing a guy wear glasses at times is hot (well, depending on the choice of frame of course)!

Paranoid people... paranoid people, there's nothing much that can be done about them.

Paddington's Shadow said...

Coldbrain: 200 is a long way to go but you never know. What a nightmare it was to try and appease people. The text message was the worst one though as it was someone from school that I hadn’t seen in years! Don’t know any pirate jokes. Have you got any?

Illegally blonde: It was a blurry day but luckily I managed to get by without falling over and only offending a few people. I lost my pair of glasses and forgot to replace them so I guess it is egg on my face for not doing so.