The Eyes Have it!

I went to the eye doctor yesterday.  I really should have waited until Halloween.  My freaky-looking giant black pupils gave me a distinctly scary-eyed look that would have been perfect for All Hallows Eve! 

As I sat in the little room waiting for my pupils to finish dilating, I thought about how these appointments always go.  The assistant briefly greets me, and takes me back to a tiny examining booth where apparently small talk is prohibited.  Even though we are the only two people in this closet-sized space, and we are breathing each other's air, it's important not to acknowledge that I am a human being...only a pair of eyes.

After a quick wipe down with a damp tissue of a monsterish-looking machine, it is swung towards me and I am instructed to look into the eye piece and focus on the image of a hot air balloon hovering over a country road. I think I pass this test with flying colors.  I see the balloon.  I focus on the balloon.

Then it's time for the eye drops which I feverishly blink into my eyes.  This should be a sign to Miss Assistant that the whole eye measuring thing where she tries to actually touch my eyeball with some ridiculous tool is not going to go smoothly. After multiple attempts, she finally decides that my eyeball isn't numb enough so in go some more drops.  Finally, the assistant either gets the measurement she needs or simply gives up because we move on to the next step.

And it's this step that always makes my palms sweat.  At this point, the assistant starts flashing lines of letters for me to look at and in a no-nonsense-voice instructs me to tell her "Which is clearer, one or two?"  "One," I say with confidence.  "Two or three?" "Two!"  "Three or four?" "Uh...three."  "Four or five?" "Five...I think, yes, five."  "Five or six?"  "Can I see five again?" (This is where the palms start sweating.) 

This exercise goes on for thirty minutes or so.  Well, maybe thirty seconds, but it feels like minutes.  Suddenly, I'm stripped of my ability to make a confident decision.  What if I make a mistake and choose the wrong number?  What if I tell them that five was clearer when really it was four?  Will I end up with a pair of glasses with coke bottle lenses?  Are they going to mock me when I leave because I can't make a decision?  Really, it's too much.

So, I'm relieved when suddenly the torture comes to an end and another assistant wisks me away to an actual examination room where I can sit and wait for the doctor.  I always wonder if those little examination rooms have hidden cameras in them.  There you are, waiting and waiting for the doctor to come in and in the meantime, you might accidently need to adjust your underwear or make faces at yourself in the mirror with those freakish eyes.  I mean, some people might need to do that.

But thankfully, the doctor's visit is over in a blink of an eye (get it?).  After a quick look into my eyes, he writes me a stronger prescription for a new pair of specs and I'm ready to face the glaring light of day as I hop in my car and head home.  Really, the whole thing is not such a big deal.  I spent the rest of the night with my owlish eyes, squinting every time I walked into a brightly lit room. 

But now the real fun begins..trying on glasses frames that I can't even begin to see because they have stickers all over the lenses and they're not my prescription.  Oh well, if I don't get it right this time, there's always next year to look forward to.