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.

Contactable

It was the afternoon lull that was responsible. The period of time when after you have eaten lunch but are still forced to work, so as a protest your body begins to shut it self down. I began to yawn and the next thing I know I’m rubbing my eyes quite hard and not paying much notice to my blurry vision as a consequence.

I only noticed what had happened after I got home from work and decided to take out my contacts. I looked in the mirror and proceeded with the ritual of dabbing my eyeball with my finger and pinching the watery lens whilst trying not to pinch my actual eyeball (something I have done many times). The left one came out with one grab but when I tried to tug at the right eye it had disappeared. At first I thought it must have fallen out at some point during the day and tried to remember if there was an occasion where this might have happened. And so I recalled the lull earlier on where I’d found my head gradually trying to meet my chest. I concluded that I must have rubbed it away from my eye ball. But where was it? Was it in the bin or lying on the floor getting trampled on by the cleaner? Nope, I had managed to dislodge the contact lens from my eye only for it to find a new home up my eye lid. I did not realise straight away having now settled down to watch some television. It was after a few minutes I kept tapping my eyelid completely ignorant that there was a foreign entity harbouring in the upper corner. Eventually the constant tapping brought me back in front of the mirror. This time I carefully pressed on my eyelid and felt the lens hunched near the top leaving me unsure on what to do. My first attempt was to try and rub it out. But this only made my eye go red and my skin burn slightly from the constant friction. It was then I realised that I needed to go up there so with my right hand I pinched my eyelid and pulled it away exposing the inners of the dark roof. I started to gag at the sight of the back of my eyeball and for a brief moment I thought it might pop out just like the girl’s did in Hostel. Having got past the freakiness and the fascination of the amount of capillaries my eyeball has around the back I began my quest for the lost lens. No matter how much I tilted my head or twisted my body I could not get sight of the thing. It was there festering while my left eye tried hard to catch sight of it, but to no avail. The only method left was to try and jam a finger up there in the hope that brute force would get the lens back. I braced myself, washed my hands again and prepared my left little finger to be the violator. As I was about to thrust it up there when I had a brainwave. If I was to fall asleep then my eye would roll backwards and there was a small chance the lens would slip back into its place. Relieved that there was another way to remove the contact without jamming one of my digits up there I headed to bed.

The next morning began badly. The lens had not moved and was still hiding somewhere in my eyelid. Annoyed that I could not go to the optometrists until after work I headed off. Ten minutes had no passed before people were asking why I was blinking so incessantly so I divulged my situation. One of my colleagues then volunteered to get it out. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should let someone prod my eyeball but I really needed the lens out of there. So I titled my head back and sure enough within a few seconds I was being shown a shrivelled little lump that had caused me so much distress.

In other news, I know it’s time to get my haircut when I start to sprout wings on the side of my head.