My Stupid Eye Adventure (Part 1)

If there's one thing we've learned from TV, it's that people with glasses are smart. If they're guys, they're smart and geeky, until they get a cool makeover from their friends in which the glasses are flipped out a window. If they're girls, they're smart and plain, until someone takes off their oversized owl glasses and reveal that they are secretly beautiful girls with really hot bodies... and not nearsighted at all! Basically, people should realize that their glasses don't have any lenses and that if they believed in themselves, they wouldn't need them. Glasses are just like Dumbo's feather, in that they were given to us by jive-talking crows so we could have the confidence to be successful circus freaks.

After my first pair of glasses broke, I needed to go to an opthalmologist to get replacements, since the crows had long since departed to some distant utopia where racism was still acceptable in cartoons. Since I know that people with glasses are very clever, I imagined that the eye doctor's, being full of the myopic, would be a haven of intellectualism, a constant symposium, or colloquy if you will, where the smart set meet and discuss matters ocular and otherwise. In preparation for joining their number, I donned a lab coat and clutched a pipe between my teeth and practiced delivering little gems of wisdom like "amo, amas, amat, amamus" and "Zounds! My automobile is afire."

Even with all my preparations, however, I became a blithering idiot once I entered the opthalmologist's.

I don't know what the problem is, but as soon as eye doctors and their assorted minions ask me anything, my memory becomes a complete blank and I have to make up for its absence by lying. I managed to stutter my way through my name, which I had been rehearsing while waiting for the receptionist to notice me. Then she took the conversation into uncharted waters with the question, "Have you been to this branch before?" "Um, I don't think so," I replied confidently. The receptionist, however, taking my word at exactly what it was worth, flipped through a hanging file and in about 3 seconds pulled out my file. "Says here you were here a year ago to replace glasses, which you broke while attempting to dive into a tub of water from a high diving board, while clutching a white feather in your nose."

"Oh, ha ha, yes, that happened," I said. "I don't know where my mind's at today. You asked whether I had been here before. Now clearly, as is proven by that file, I was here before, but I had forgotten. It can happen to even clever folks like me."

The receptionist ignored me and let me wander throughout the store, trying on glasses and trying to put things into my mouth, until the optometrist took me in and sat me in front of the weird eye machine they use to remove Superman's heat vision and give it to Lex Luthor. In order to rattle me further, the optometrist asked me a few more questions that I should know the answer to, like "what kind of contacts do you use? Hydrovue or Bausch & Lomb?" I picked up a nearby bottle of contact solution and stared at it meditatively. "Comfort Plus Complete," I said, then amended that statement with, "is the name of a contact lens SOLUTION, not a contact lens. You didn't ask what SOLUTION I used, did you? Come to think of it, this is your bottle. For a moment I thought that this metal table was my bathroom sink and this was my bottle. In answer to your question, sir, I use the first contact lens you mentioned. Hydra... sure... compact... vue."

"Hydrovue?"

"Quite."

"OK, although your records show that you use Bausch & Lomb." The doctor scribbled the word "DOPE FIEND--POSSIBLY DANGEROUS" on his pad and gave me an eye exam, during which he had to remind me not to keep both eyes closed, as that interferes with the test.

After the test, the doctor told me what contacts he was going to make for me, what prescription they were, and what brand they were. He carefully drilled me in what to tell the receptionist, so she'd know what to order. Not content with telling me, and afraid that I wouldn't prove to be fast reader, he drew me a rebus.

"What kind of lenses are you going to order?" asked the receptionist.

I stared at the rebus. "Hmm... eye... uhh... carrot minus OT," I mused. "This is a schoolbus.... and this is..." Finally I gave up and announced, "I'll take Hydrovue."

The receptionist wrote "Bausch & Lomb" on the order form. "Is your prescription the same in both eyes?"

I looked longingly at the exit. "I don't know," I moaned. "The guy said, but I was thinking about dinner. Just write whatever you want." I made the same answer to all of her questions, until finally I escaped to blessed freedom. As I left the building I felt my head grow heavy with returning IQ points.

I had gone to the optometrist and escaped with my life. There was only one problem: I had to return in 2 weeks to pick up my prescription.