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I should probably tell you right now that this story is going to be a little bit gross. If you have eyes, and I assume you do, the odds are fairly high that you are going to squinch them shut quite suddenly while reading it, not unlike a man who flinches and subconsciously reaches protectively for his testicles whenever he stumbles across the word "castration." This story has to do with eyes you see, my eyes in particular, and people have sort of a thing about eyes. I have less of a thing about eyes than most -- willingly sticking your finger into them twice a day to add and remove contacts will do that, I guess -- so it's only fair that I warn you, here and now, that maybe you don't want to be eating that bunch of grapes while you read this. Or that bowl of cherry tomatoes.
So one night, I took my contact lenses out while getting ready for bed. Nothing unusual there, but almost immediately after removing the right one, I felt like I had something in my eye. I blinked and blinked, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and still ... ow. It felt like a speck of dust or a fleck of mascara, and so I flushed and flushed and flushed my eye with cold water, periodically peeking up from the faucet to see if the feeling had gone. It didn't go. I flushed some more, flushed for a good twenty minutes probably, and then I consulted Google to see if flushing was actually the right thing to do. It was. So I flushed some more.
Nothing was happening. My eye was now killing me. You know how it is when you've got something stuck in your eye? It feels like a golf ball lodged in there, and half the pain comes from the panic that you can't get it out. Maybe I need to cry, I thought, flush it out the natural way. So I got into bed, tipped my head back, and tried putting a few drops of those fake tears in my eye. Then I tried thinking of something really sad. "Want to me to to pinch you?" asked Sean, helpfully. "I bet that'll make you cry."
I declined. I put some more drops in. The feeling persisted. "What the hell do I do?" I asked Sean. "Go to the emergency room?" I thought about walking into the emergency room, past the people with the broken legs and the bloody noses, crying to the receptionist that I had something in my eye. I decided not to go to the emergency room. I decided to try to go to sleep instead. All night, I dreamed that something was in my eye, waking up periodically to discover that yep, what do you know, there still was.
In the morning, nothing had changed. What the hell? I thought. I must have some sort of unsinkable BATTLESHIP in my eye. I consulted Dr. Google. Then I consulted his associate, Dr. Twitter. If you've ever wondered whether there's anything more medically unreliable than consulting Dr. Google, I'm here to tell you that yes, consulting Dr. Twitter is that thing. "Eh, you probably got whatever it was out and now it's just scratched," said Dr. Twitter. "Keep flushing with water, wear your glasses, and it'll heal on its own."
Awesome, I thought. But then Dr. Twitter changed his mind. "OH MY GOD, GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW," he bellowed. "THIS SAME THING HAPPENED TO MY FRIEND AND NOW SHE'S BLIND."
It went on like that for an hour or so, half of Twitter all laissez-faire and unconcerned, the other half gloomily predicting my imminent loss of sight.
I wonder if I should go to the eye doctor, I thought. And then: But I don't have an eye doctor.
I did a half-hearted search on Yelp and found one a few blocks from me. She had fifteen 5-star ratings. Good enough for me, I thought. I picked up my phone. I set it back down again. How much will this cost? I thought. Eh, I don't need to go. I'm sure it'll be fine. My eye bugged me all afternoon. I blinked. I flushed. I tried to ignore it.
At three o'clock, my vision started to go blurry. You know, I thought, standing up. I think I will now make an executive decision not to go blind.
There are some things you don't mess around with, I have since decided. Eyes are one. Hearts are another. Your finger hurts? Eh, sure, wait it out. Your eye? Don't take any chances. Don't be a
