"Getting older is like riding a bicycle, if you don't keep pedaling you'll fall.
--Claude D. Pepper
I don't like wearing glasses, but I've been saddled with them for several years now. I couldn't tell you how many pairs of them I've misplaced, or how three or four of them will end up on the kitchen counter while I'm looking for a pair on my bedside table. So when my eye doctor suggested I try contacts, I thought it was worth having a go.
I had misgivings, of course. Can't teach an old dog new tricks and all that. But I managed the initial training of putting in and removing foreign objects from my eye with only mild awkwardness. Later on I got through the prescribed few hours of wear time without any trouble and then carefully put the contacts to bed in their little aquatic compartments.
The next morning I felt confident as I prepared for my first solo attempt at putting them in again, but if a video camera had been handy it would have made an amusing installment on YouTube. Open WIDE...poke...damn, where'd it go? Ah, stuck to the mirror. Try again... now it's hanging from my nose. In the end I succeeded with the left eye but the intended occupant of the right eye went missing. I don't know how they do this, but contacts are slippery little devils and apparently have a tendency toward escape. Visiting the eye doctor to report this was a humbling experience, but being a sensitive man, he only gave me a knowing smile and handed over a replacement.
With some remedial instruction from Dan, a long-time contact wearer himself, I conquered the right eye challenge and off we went on a morning of errands. About 3 hours later my left eye began to tear up in protest and, when I ignored this, it went into full revolt. Being a novice, I failed to recognize its plea for moisture and assumed I now had a second foreign object in my eye. Something the size of a pencil lead, by the feel of it. Dan suggested eye drops.
Lesson 2 - always carry eye drops. We pulled into a Walmart parking lot to purchase some, but by then I was unable to keep my left eye open and was in no mood to go shopping with a pronounced squint. Thanks to the natural aging process, I can resemble Popeye well enough without this. Dan went in while I waited in the car, diligently applying part B of Lesson 1: get the damn thing out of the eye. With only a few trials - a considerable improvement in technique - I removed the contact and dropped it into it's case. Blessed relief...except, no, something's still not right.
By the time Dan returned to the car I'd figured out that the contact had torn and half of it remained in my eye. I had no strategy for dealing with this other than bellowing for help. Dan calmly removed the remaining bit from my eye and assured me that this was a mere fluke. After such an ordeal, we detoured to have lunch at a creek-side restaurant, where I pacified myself with a very large chocolate milk shake. Then we returned to the eye doctor's office but it was closed, sparing me the humiliation of returning twice within 4 hours for replacements.
I've now got the hang of wearing contacts and they serve me reasonably well. They don’t congregate on my kitchen counters or fog up when I open the oven door, but I consider them a nuisance of a different sort with their demand for sterile drops and their temperamental reaction to dust. Who’d have thought that of all the things I might miss about my youth, 20-20 eyesight would top the list?
