I’m at the eye doctor’s today. A new eye doctor for me. I’m there because one half of my left eye is blood red and zombie scary and has been that way for two weeks. I decided I needed to see someone once I started wearing my sunglasses in the bathroom so I didn’t have to look at myself and then in bed, so MB didn’t have to look at me. Don’t look at me! I’m a hideous monster! I’m a plague of Egypt!
Last week, I didn’t even go to The Banshee’s little recital because I didn’t want to traumatize her with Super Gross Tee Tee or give her anything that would make her become Super Gross Banshee and then blame Super Gross Tee Tee.
The eye doctor is balding and short and has an ominous demeanor. Meaning, there are just too many pregnant pauses between his words for me to believe that the end of the world — or my eye — is not imminent. He swings the Viewmaster thingie in front of my face and tells me to place my chin in the chin stirrup with the little disposable tissues. Never know what dread disease someone else’s chin may give you. Trapped this way, I have nothing else to do but “stare straight” as he says, right into the cavern of his left nostril, and wait for him to finish a damn sentence, for the love of God.
“Well, it looks like …….”
“What?”
“…………..”
He’s still looking through the Viewmaster.
“Is it bad?”
“…………………………”
He is enthralled by the Viewmaster.
Good God, man! Just hurry up and tell me I’m gonna die because of my zombie eye!
“There seems to be an inflammatory process ………”
Really? What gave it away? I mean, it wasn’t the hideous redness, was it??
“So what does that mean?”
“………………………………………”
He doesn’t answer. He just does the weird thing. Or, rather, the weirder thing.
He pushes the Viewmaster away from my face, takes a little light, and shines it into my red eye of Sauron.
Oh, but that’s not the weirder thing.
No. The weirder thing is this:
He touches his forehead to my forehead while he shines the little light into my red eye of Sauron.
He touches his forehead to my forehead.
Without telling me, “I am now going to touch my forehead to your forehead,” he touches his forehead to my forehead.
Sure. It’s not, “I am now going to insert this frozen speculum into your frightened vagina,” but a little heads up about the forehead thing would be nice. This is not a date. To me, anyway.
He’s holding my head loosely to shine this light, but I don’t feel I can pull away and maybe this is all perfectly normal and I’m a paranoid baby, but he’s close enough for me to start counting the gray hairs in his mustache. He’s close enough for any number of things that I would label more “pervy felon” than “eye doctor.” The lights are off in the room and it’s all just a teensy bit creepy.
I am literally planning “a move.”
If you get any closer to me, dude, which I actually don’t think is possible, I am taking my knee and ramming it into your crotch and I will walk outta here still with my plague eye but you will walk out of here with a brand new plague penis. Talk about your inflammatory process, Slappy. You have mere seconds to get the hell offa me. I am not kidding.
After about 20 of the longest seconds of my life, he stops touching his forehead to my forehead, thank God, and I can once again live my life as an independent entity — and, you know, not a conjoined twin.
I believe in the future, I will be taking my red eye of Sauron, should it ever rise again, elsewhere.
Was it the kind of infection that would stop traffic? I mean, we may be on to something here.
hahahahaha I love reading words like “frightened vagina” at 9 o’clock in the morning.
What the heck is going on with your Sauron eye?? I remember about 15 years ago after I had first moved to New York, I too had red inflamed eyes and looked like a zombie. It was awesome because I had just started school – so that was the first impression I was making. “Nice to meet you, Sheila … er … I mean, nice to meet you SCARY FREAKIN’ ZOMBIE.”
I had no health insurance at the time, so I diagnosed myself with Ebola.
I had eye “issues” back a couple of years ago, and I had to go the eye doctor every morning at 8:00 for two weeks. Of course, MY eye doctor is supa-sexy and smelled of peppermint and Cool Water by Davidoff. I think if he would’ve touched his forehead to my forehead, I would’ve kissed him.
AWKWARD.
How did this guy fit one of those penlights between him and your Sauron Eye, if your foreheads were touching? Did he shine it at you from below like a ghost story around the campfire?
And then…. their foreheads TOUCHED!
So, not only unprofessional and awkward and ultra-creepy – also unhelpful. (And kinda ultra-creepy.) So many confusing questions this early in the morning.
Sorry to hear that your process is inflamed, Tracey. Hope you feel better soon.
My red eye of Sauron is something called episcleritis. Not an infection, but “an inflammmmmatory process,” pippa. Of the sclera, you see. It’s part of the eye, apparently.
sheila — /so I diagnosed myself with Ebola./
Hahahahahaha.
And I think it’s fair to say that even though only our foreheads touched, my vagina was very frightened.
Lisa — /MY eye doctor is supa-sexy and smelled of peppermint and Cool Water by Davidoff/
Yummy. I’d kiss that guy too. NOT this one. He wore wallabee shoes.
Frightened Vagina would be a great name for an all-girl emo band. Or an all-male Death Metal band.
Wallabee shoes are a dealbreaker. I say that as someone who wore them every day in 5th grade. In my defense, I wore them because Holly on “Land of the Lost” wore them.
Maybe he was trying to scare the inflammation out of your eyeball. Or just take your mind off it by violating your personal space.
My eye doctor is really quiet and seems constantly unhappy, so he probably came from the same school as yours.
The eye doctor I went to before I left home used to get in real close with the light that he would shine in my eye. It took all of my will to not burst out laughing. I wanted to every time though.
Not quite the same as forehead to forehead though. That is strange and disturbing.
/frightened vagina/
I laughed out-loud-like.
Just you wait, Sarah. Just you wait.