Wanting Contacts

“Only… only… wanting contact.” – Peter Gabriel, I Have the Touch

I used to wear these humongous glasses. And when I say humongous, I mean seriously LARGE, like they took up two-thirds of my face. At least I had peripheral vision, I used to tell people, so I could make light of it. Then my nephew broke them and I was forced to get a different pair of glasses. There were so many different styles to choose from, but in the end I got a pair that were just like my large ones, only they were smaller. The new ones only took up about half of my face, and I made do with them for a few years. Then, when it was time to get a new prescription I got stylish ones that were in a half-frame. By that time they had gotten my strong prescription to fit in smaller glasses, thin glass indeed, which had been the problem before, and why I had to have the huge frames, because the glass in them was enormously thick too. No longer. And I thought I was styling, until I got my first pair of contacts.

Wow, talk about different. It took me forever to be able to put them in because my eye kept closing on my finger, anticipating even when I tried to surprise it. That pissed me off because everyone kept saying how easy it was. My wife put hers in and took hers out so efficiently, but she told me it was only because she had been wearing contacts since she was a teenager. I was sure after listening to her that my problems lay merely in the fact that I’m an old dog, and contacts were new tricks. They wouldn’t let me leave the eyecare place with my new contacts until I had put them in and taken them out by myself. Yeah, we were there for a while.

Eventually, though, I was able to get my very-red-by-then eyes to accept the foreign objects, and then ironically had to then take them out. I was so happy I got them in I never wanted to take them out, but the eyecare guy sat there like a stern instructor waiting for me to finish my test because I was the last one in the classroom. I took them out, and we left. Once we got home, I thought it would be easy as pie to put them in and take them out. After all, I had done so in the eyecare place. I conveniently forgot how long it had taken me to get them in in the first place, until I had to do it again the next morning at home.

Let’s just say I let loose a few choice phrases that you’ll hardly ever hear me use that morning. And twenty minutes later, they were still no closer to going in than they had been when I started. And, yeah, I didn’t wear them that day, but with hard work and persistence I was finally able to get them in and out with minimal issues… in only a few months’ time. Hooray for me. And I looked different, very very different, from the guy I had always seen in the mirror. When I had those contacts in I felt like one of those models, you know, like Tyson Beckford, one of those guys. It was incredible what they did for my self-confidence. I even began styling my hair differently, which did even more to make my eyes “pop,” was what one of my friends said.

Then they began to bother me. It was subtle at first, and it took a few years to do even that, but it eventually I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I could feel them in there, which was new, different, and decisively uncomfortable. My eye doctor told me it was nothing. I should just use some eye drops, but I wasn’t so sure, and my eyes were definitely against using eye drops. They just would not stay open, no matter what I did. It was a devastating day, the day I decided I just couldn’t wear contacts anymore. It was almost like I was burying a friend when I threw that last pair into the trash and got back out my old glasses that had seemed so stylish when I had first gotten them.

But my eyes feel amazing now, and my self-confidence has gone up since I last wore them on a consistent basis. I realize now that I don’t need my eyes to “pop.” The people who care about me care about me for me, not because my eyes sparkle in contacts. Now, I hear people talk about this teeth whitening gel. I wonder what that’s all about…

Sam