Contact Information

So yesterday morning I'm putting my right contact lens in my eye. As usual, I see it resting lightly on the tip of my finger and make the smooth approach toward my eye. I feel the light pressure as the finger reaches its target much like the previous 10,000 times. There's only one difference.

I still can't see.

What the...?

I start doing that thing where you hold one eye open and roll it all around, searching it with your other eye in a fashion that, if I were facing a job interviewer instead of my bathroom mirror, would cause the poor soul to work really hard to keep a straight face.

Those of you who have reached this threat-level-red of contact lens ownership know that the next crucial step is to search around every nearby square inch as much as possible while keeping your feet absolutely still. The resulting dance of swiveling hips, awkward twisting splayed-leg knee bends (since one is usually belly-up to an immovable sink/cabinet at this point) and nose-to-the-countertop squinting is yet another ritual that would have doomed the human race had the first caveman performed it in front of the first cavewoman.

The body is over 80% water, so wet contacts in a steamy bathroom are also known to cling to skin as part of their escape attempt, but as best I could tell peering all about through the shadows this was not part of the plan.

Satisfied enough that the lens is neither stuck to me nor in danger of foot squishing, I dash to the utility room for the nearest flashlight. After re-searching all surfaces back at the scene of the crime, I do another googly-eyed semi-self-blinding inspection at the mirror, a scene that's undoubtedly staged in optometrist training videos for comic relief.

At last I start rationalizing the situation, the way Navy rescue patrollers probably do after the man's been lost at sea for three days. "Probably bounced down the drain" (which isn't a viable option for the Navy, but you get my drift) "No big deal, there are plenty more" (actually, this is a pretty terrible analogy isn't it).

My replacement contact lens ably filled the role of its predecessor without further incident. That is, until the next morning, when placing the contact in my eye managed to make my eyesight worse. For a moment, I pondered whether it were possible for a priest to do an exorcism on an eye. Until I withdrew the contact - or should I say, the contacts - from my right eye. Evidently the rogue contact's plan was to hide out in the recesses of my eye socket until the coast was clear and then make a break for it. It worked... I pitched it into the trash.