I can see clearly now...

So i finally got contacts! Wednesday afternoon I went to Costco and got an eye exam. I haven't had one in over 5 years. I still had the same anxiety that I remember from the first one I took. You know what I'm talking about... that worry that you might not get the best possible prescription possible due to some sort of user error on your part... that feeling that you need to ace a test and the odds aren't in your favor. It's just hard, because you want the best possible eyesight, obviously; but in the end, the ball is in your court, and your court only. Not like there's an optometrist around to help anybody.

"Which is better? This one? Or this one?" she says to me, in a stern, concerned, optometresque tone.

"Well, the second one is brighter than the first, but i don't know if it's sharper," I reply. She says nothing. She moves on.

"How bout this one? Is this better, or this one?"

"Well, the second one seems bolder than the first, but I still can't say it's sharper," still touting that analytical, poetical perspective, courtesy of George Mason University's English department -- namely, Professor Jennifer Atkinson.

This whole process was driving me crazy. I felt like if I failed this, then I would most certainly crash my car into a blurry landscape of deciduous pine trees along Hunter Mill Road on some foggy February night. I felt like I was in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and most certainly choosing the wrong adventure.... you know... the one that seems fine, but you aren't sure how it stacks up against the other adventures, and in the end, it turns out you get cornered in an alley by 2 unsavory gentlemen that are short on cash, and you much wish you had instead decided to take the fan-powered swamp boat with the Canadian botanist.

The exam ended, and she introduced me to my first pair of contacts ever. Up until this point, I hadn't addressed the reality that at some point during this exam I would have to do something to my eyes that I had never done before: force a foreign object onto the face of my pupils and not blink, at all. Just as difficult to say as it is to do. She put the first one in my right eye for me. I thought it took her a while, though it only took her maybe a minute. Man was I in for a surprise.

She sat me down in front of a mirror and let me go at it for a while. No matter what I did, my eye would keep closing. I mean I would literally pin my upper eyelid to my eyebrow, but as the contact neared my eyeball my eyelid would thrust my finger aside and clamp down on the helpless contact lense like a Venus Flytrap. This lasted at least about 20 minutes until I finally got it in, feeling very watery, blurry, itchy, and sore at this point.

Per the request of the optometrist, I was instructed to now remove the successfully installed contact lense from my right eye, and put it back in. I sadly agreed, as it did make sense; it just made for a difficult afternoon.

Though quicker than the left eye, it must have taken me 20 more minutes to remove the contact from my right eye, and put it back in. By the time I had finished, it looked like someone had rubbed the contents of a vacuum bag into my eyes.

It's been a few days now. This whole time I've been trying to figure out if my eyesite is better or not. It's hard to tell cause I feel like my eyes are still adjusting to these little built-in glasses. The jury's still out on whether or not my prescription actually got better. There's so much new stuff going on in my eyeballs that I can't keep it all straight.

The Pro's are: Once in, contacts are easy; I don't have to remember to bring my glasses everywhere I go; I don't look nerdy; and I can wear sunglasses and see clearly... what a concept!

Con's include: That entire time leading up to "Once in..." Though, I am happy to say I'm getting much faster at it. Also, I've been persistent in trying to determine whether my prescription is better now than the one I had for my glasses. Contacts make it hard to go back and forth quickly. But hopefully I'll get over that whole fear that I "chose the wrong adventure" sooner than later and move on with my life. Is it still too late to take the fan-powered swamp boat? Oh man, what page was that on?