Seeing Eye to Eye

One of the most difficult chores for me is the regular follow-up with the optometrist. Frankly I'd list that particular appointment right up there with dentist drills as the prerequisite punishments visits I hate most in a year.

Not only do I dislike being subjected to examinations ( ironic that I'm a doctor, right? ) but I also hate getting stuff poked in my eye. You can imagine how my opthalmologist pal, Eye Eddie used to tease me mercilessly about my phobias! It's a deep abiding fear... newly sharpened pencils, pointy chopsticks, all are a serious no-no for me.

Which is why I usually leave that dreaded visit to the optometrist to the last minute - either when I'm already far too sight-impaired to walk a straight line ( or I get the usual dull, throbbing migraines ) or when someone inadvertently steps on my glasses. Usually the latter unfortunately.


Bet you don't know who I am without my glasses!
Received a grievous injury to my glasses the other day while I was busy on the hunt for willing prey during Raya. Quite worth it though but I knew I'd have to face the wrath of the optometrist sooner or later.

Once I half-heartedly walked into the store in search of my prescription glasses, I found myself faced with so many mind-boggling choices ( that all curiously look terrifyingly similar! ) that I was sorely tempted to back out again! Of course the obliging manager - who I know well enough outside work, our own Dreadlocks Darian - caught me just as I was about to scurry away and dragged me unwillingly over to a bevy of shiny frames yet unseen.

Like how do you choose a frame?

Don't ask me. Though I've been buying them on my own for quite a while now ( ever since I first realized that I can't read the damned blackboard back in primary ), I'll be damned if I know what suits my face. Or if anything actually suits my face in the first place.

And like I said, don't they all look distressingly similar?

Of course all that dilly-dallying while choosing my spectacles couldn't be half as traumatic an experience as that faced by Lanky Lex who dropped by to lend moral support only to get bulldozed by the rest into trying out contact lenses. You see, he shares my innate phobia of stuff getting into our eyes. Yet sheer vanity - and the promise that his luminous brown eyes will finally be truly appreciated by the world without the distraction of his horn-rims - won over his unreasonable inner fears.

Bowing to peer pressure, Lex finally acquiesced to the clamorous demands and found himself tasked with jabbing himself in the eyes with dirty nails. So you can easily imagine what torture he must have faced getting those silicone jellies into his eyes. Eeew. What if they slipped in never to be found?! What if the lenses sliced through the muscles?!

It's irrational. It's illogical. It's patently absurd. But that's a phobia for you :)