Wed: I don't like wearing contacts

There’s some things you take for granted when you’re growing up; stories with happy endings, 3 meals a day, no school on weekends, and perfect vision. I took those things for granted anyway. Inevitably things change however, you get older, you spend too much time reading in the dark, sit too close to the television, don’t eat enough carrots, and suddenly you wake up on morning and have some issues reading your alarm clock. “Whatever, it’s early, my eyes are blurry”, but slowly throughout the day things don’t clear up. You can’t read street signs, watch TV, recognize people from a distance, it’s frustrating. So you end up getting finally waving the white flag and getting glasses, or in my case contacts.

I’m really not a fan of wearing contacts for so many reasons:

Loss of sleep
I’m not a morning person so being able to hop out of bed throw on some clothes and be out the door in under 5 minutes was something I loved. It was one of the great things about being a guy. Now I have to stumble into the bathroom, and groggily try to poke some saran wrap circles onto my eyes every morning. It’s probably only an additional 2-5 minutes but when sleep is concerned every minute counts.

Inside Out?
So there’s this test to figure out whether or not your contacts are inside out or not. It’s called the taco test and basically you kind of squeeze the 2 ends together and if they form a taco then your contact is correct. I’ve been wearing these things for over a year now and still the taco test eludes me. And when you put them in backwards it’s like having a hamster claw at your eye everytime you blink. Then you’re in that weird catch-22 of opening your eye and dealing with that searing pain to get the contact out or leaving it shut and hoping it magically disappears or flips itself around. It sounds crazy now but when you have something in your eye, these thoughts seem reasonable.

Cinderella Rules
If you’ve ever had contacts then you know what I’m talking about. Right around midnight your eyes just can’t take it anymore, the dryness starts to set in. It doesn’t care that you still have 86 minutes left in Braveheart, those contact need to be quenched, and they need to be quenched now. Unfortunately this usually leads to the next reason-

Some Proverbs 16:30 Confusion
No, I’m not winking at you, I’m doing my best to keep these contacts from rolling up like nightshades inside my skull. So please accept my apologies. I realize that non-verbal communication is 93% of effective communication, but what’s going on there has no message except maybe “you don’t happen to have some eye drops do you?”

Fear of “the Lost Contact”
I’m told that this is physically impossible but it still has me worried. What if that contact decides to swing around to the back of you eyeball and just fall off or something? Where does it go? Does it just bounce around your head? (Did you just shiver right now? I know it’s gross right?). It is an eyeball after all and relatively round, what keeps the contact from just getting stuck on the inner hemisphere. Also you wouldn’t even know the contact was gone and you’d just be poking at your eye for hours trying to grab the contact that is no longer there.

It’s not getting better
Contacts aren’t like crutches, casts, splints, or braces. Your eyes aren’t going to “heal” and never need them again. It’s only downhill from here, and that means that everyday of your life you are having the worst vision that you have ever had. For those graph people, it’s a continuous, steady downward slope. The best days are behind you.

So I’m not really this jaded about contacts. In reality I appreciate the amazing technology that they are, and am grateful to them for helping me see every day. These gripes do float around in my head though, when I’m feeling particularly and unjustly stricken with the affliction of bad eyesight (which really isn’t that bad, it’s like a -1.50 or something). These Wednesday posts just allow me to make a list of things that remind me that God has a world waiting for me not affected by sin. And a body waiting for me that can sleep in that extra 5 minutes because it has perfect vision.