The other day, I had an eye doctor appointment.
I actually have fairly good eyesight. My previous position killed my eyesight, as I was looking at microscopic 5 pt. Computer printouts and a hideous black mainframe monitor. Now, I have a gigantic pc monitor and work completely in Office products. But I like to wear glasses. I feel cute in them’. As though I immediately gained several I.Q. points and may have gone to Vanderbilt or Harvard rather than the good old University of Wisconsin, may regularly read Utne Reader (which I do, actually, but I just don’t look like I do) instead of the National Enquirer (which I sometimes read as well, for all the news that’s cheaper than buying comic books), might drink natural Australian spring water rather than Diet Coke from McDonald’s.
My normal cool eye doctor guy is no longer in our insurance plan, so I made an appointment at a new guy. Well, he’s not exactly new. He was old. Like 840 years old. And missing a finger. And wearing a little lapel button with a picture of Jesus Christ on it, looking startlingly effeminate and displaying his heart on the outside of his chest.
I’ve never really understood that look. I guess it runs in His family, though, because sometimes I see pictures of his Mom with the exposed heart as well. Maybe having your heart on the outside of your body is a genetic thing? You’d think it would be kind of gross though. Airbags would pose a problem as well, I would think. But then, Jesus, being all 0 B.C. and all, probably didn’t have to worry about it much.
But I mused about the implications of having an optometrist who was attracted to the whole Inside Out Jesus thing. It was almost like having X-Ray vision. I tried to make a Margaret Atwood-esque metaphor out of that, because I’m reading The Blind Assassin right now and am prone to gross copying of her style whenever I read her stuff, but I’m just not talented enough to make the Atwood metaphorical leap. Besides, I think she did that one already in Cat’s Eye.
Dr. Old directed me to put my face in a machine. ‘Is it going to blow air in my eyes?’ I asked.
‘No.. this is to see what kind of prescription we might give you, but we will be testing the pressure of your eye for glaucoma later.’
‘No you won’t. I don’t want it.’
‘Well, how would you know if you had glaucoma then? You’ll have to sign a release!’
I sighed. My previous cool YOUNG eye doctor never blew the air in my eyes. He never lectured me. Hence, he was cool. I felt like saying ‘Look, you go ahead and blow a jet of air into my eyeball if you’ll let me kick you in your prunes with my Doc Martens, ok?’
But I didn’t. Because I’m certain he would have been most confused with the ‘prunes’ term, thinking maybe I meant the Sunsweets he had undoubtedly eaten for breakfast. Besides, I’m not that nasty, even to mean old eye doctor’s with exposed Messiah hearts on their lapels.
‘I’ll sign the release.’ I said.
He grimaced at me, griped at me and then proceeded to give me the most incredibly bored and disinterested eye exam I’ve ever received. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t derive pleasure from hearing ‘Which is better’ one or two’ one or two’ repeated five million times while I try frantically to decide which is better, having the V in the top row blurry or having the E in the lower row look like a 3.
Then he went to shine the little light thing into my eye. And he dropped the thing. I almost made a ‘Oooh, be careful’ you break it, you bought it’ remark but as I was a glaucoma pariah, felt it wouldn’t have been taken in the jovial manner in which it was intended. It was a good thing’ because he did break it. And spent no less than thirty minutes trying to replace the bulb inside it. In silence. Then he disappeared. And it was hot in there. Old people hot. Then he returned, set his freshly-fixed instrument down only to have it roll off the table AND FALL ON THE DAMN FLOOR AGAIN!
And it broke again. Thus we began the second round. In silence. Listening to him grunt and try to unscrew this fragile instrument with his three fingers, watching his Open Heart Jesus bob frantically on his lapel.
Finally, he got the thing figured out, wrote me my prescription and I fled to the safety of the waiting room to pick out my frames. His collection seemed to be assembled from the Fugly school of eyeglasses. Think Trailer Park circa 1978. Those big moony frames from the 80’s, with the purple shading on the top’ the kinds girls used to put tiny heart stickers in the corners.
I made up an excuse about having chest pains and seeing a bright light and fled. I tried to go to my cool eye doctor’s place, but he had moved. I spent the next hour trying to remember where it was that he had relocated to, finally finding it an hour later.
I walked into his new office. An Armani display to my left, a Ralph Lauren display to my right’ Raybans ahead. I sighed. I was home.
I spent a fun thirty minutes trying a bunch of funky frames and ended up with a pair of oblong DKNY black frames. They make me look funky and cool. I’ve always wanted semi-ugly frames that would, hopefully, make my face look pretty and delicate in contrast. We’ll see. The only downer was that I had to actually pay for them myself rather than allowing my insurance to cover it. I don’t care.
I’m really that vain.
Last night, I decided that I loved Brandon on Survivor, which is pretty much like a kiss of death for any player. Damn that Mark Burnett. Tweaks my emotions like a cheap pull toy! Damn him all to hell!
But I have to say, I just loved Brandon’s whole hard ass routine with Frank. I sort of love Frank a little bit too’ which undoubtedly means that it will soon be his time to go. Frank is a Talking Rudy Doll if there ever was one. I keep waiting for him to say ‘I was with a queer who ran around bare assed half the time.’ I do think Tom needs close captioning’. Maybe his corn meal mush had fermented or something but I think he was channeling MushMouth from Fat Albert in last night’s episode. I was rather disappointed that he didn’t manage to sneak a glimpse of his anal cleft in last night, but maybe with the in-depth coverage of his neck boil, that was deemed enough Grosser Side of Tom for one sixty-minute episode during the family hour.
Ladies and Gentlemen’ the Tiffany channel at its finest.
