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My Wonky Left Eye

While growing up, my parents (or at least my mother and her family) would always say how my mom prayed before I was born that at the very least I would get my mother’s eyes. My mom was pretty hot so I wish she had asked for more. In the end, I was my mother from the tip of the nose to the top of my head and my father for the rest. So the almighty had answered her prayers but she was not explicit enough and although my eyes look like my mother’s, they functioned like the 143 year old eye balls that my dad uses on a daily basis. I had an astygmatism and very bad short sightedness. Then I got laser surgery and it was all solved.

The act of having your eyes surgically altered is about as weird and uncomfortable as they come. You go into an office that does not look much like a medical office or a place with highly sophisticated lasers in it. They give you a half ass eye exam making sure your eyeballs will not fall out under pressure and then ask for your credit card. The history of your eyes is not important and make sure to consult with your regular optician before having surgery since the laser-ists are simply there to make some money. You are then escorted into a room and given a valium pill which looks far too small to help the situation. Before that has time to settle in and take affect, you are asked to lay down on a chair that is surrounded by two huge machines with a stool next to one side. The doctor will sit down on the stool, and then pry open your eyes with the things they use in a clock work orange to make sure you do not blink. Then they bring over the first machine, its job is to cut open your lense and leave a small flap so it can be lifted up. As the machine is put right in front of your face and it makes its light noises, you can actually smell your eye burning. Then the machine is removed after a few seconds, no pain. The doctor takes his tweezers and slowly flaps open your lense. This is the weirdest part. Without a lense you basically see nothing and you are forced to sign all sorts of papers guarding against the doctor sneezing and loosing your lense at this part which would leave you completely useless in this world.

Now I did have a problem at this point with the fact that I was coughing up $4k to have this doctor press a few buttons, clock work orange my eyes, then use some tweezers twice. But I guess he did have the machines. None the less… screw you guy.

So with your eye lid flipped over, they roll you underneath the other machine which is going to actually smooth out the cornia. Mine was in the shape of a crumpled piece of paper so when light was shining onto this surface, images were being construed. For this reason, they say you shouldn’t be able to have too many laser corrections like my wacky Swedish roommate from California is trying to do. This machine takes all of 2 minutes and then the doctor folds your lense back down. Then repeat the process for the other eye and you are done.

You leave the office with four pairs of sunglasses strapped to your head and definately unable to drive but I knew immediately that things had changed and I could see. Over the course of the next few weeks, your eyes are healing so some mornings you will wake up and you see a ghastly huge white ball in your vision and you freak out and run around the house naked with your arms in the air. but this is just your eye healing and the next day this would go away. Now I can swim under water, go into smokey rooms, actually zoom in on objects in the distance, drive at night, and much more. I had estimated 2 weeks of my life, if you put all the time on end, were going to be saved by not dealing with my eyes using contacts and glasses. Oh what to do with those two weeks?

That was about 3 years ago. Since then I have had impecable vision and I regularly enjoy showing off my superhuman vision. It is amazing how many people are content to go through life having to squint at billboards and screens showing their departure gate. I always imagine myself back in the days prior to corrective vision. I would walk into a room filled with people who might all say hi to me, and I would respond with a blank “hey everybody” much like Dr. Nic from the simpsons. But really I wouldn’t have a clue who anyone was and I wouldn’t until I got about 6 inches from their face. That would probably freak most people out. I think I would come up with a story that I needed to smell people to really be able to trust them or something.

Now I am in England and over the course of the last few weeks I have noticed something that worries me a little. My left eye is starting to twitch. Currently the twitch is not visible but it is becoming more and more constant. At first I thought it was due to the fact that my Oakley sunglasses were stolen in Argentina and has forced me to cycle without eye gear. This has put several dozen live bugs deep into my eye socket, likely never to come out and will be absorbed into my body. Also wind, water, sweat, snot, and everything else at very high speed. My hair is long right now as well so maybe that has something to do with it? I do not know. However I do know that my left eye has always been a flaw in my fotogenicity. This was prior to my surgery so maybe I was destined for the fate of being creepy psycho guy with an eye twitch and just for added effect, I will start using a cane and flick my head back each time. just to scare off the little children.

In an effort to answer this current problem, I have compiled all the pictures that I have of myself that displays my wonky eye. Some drunk, but many not. If you have pictures of me with a wonky eye, I would love to see them. It is for scientific reasons fo course.

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