'You will feel a puff'. Will I now I thought to myself, I'll be the judge of that then realised she was describing the instrument of torture that was going to be pointing at my eye. I have always hated opticians and dentists, not because of what they do but how they go about it, ok it is about what they do. I think my horror of dentists started many years ago when I was rather small, I had gone in for a tooth removal only for the dentist to not give me enough gas so I sat rigid on the edge of sleep feeling and hearing everything, unable to complain through the wooze as he gleefully removed three teeth instead of one because they looked dodgy. I still remember the cracking sound to this day and the blood, oh, the blood, excuse me whilst I pass out.
Thud.
My problem with opticians though is not to do with pain but many years ago having a eye test with an optician that had a piece of food lodged between their front teeth and breath that could turn milk sour, you know the type don't you. Having a strangers head thrust two inches from your own and immediately knowing they had eaten a cheese and onion sandwich followed by a chocolate mousse is not up there with my top experiences. You tend to go into a semi fixated state when presented with something like that and I really couldn't take my eyes off the specks of food bobbing up and down in front of me whilst holding down my lunch, I eventually got rebuked for not concentrating. So my eye test was not something I was looking forward to.
They are always boring places to be in though, I mean, look at this, a little unloved isn't it? It's not the opticians fault, I suppose as a job there's little you can do to sex it up. The slideshow on display didn't really help, it was supposed to inspire you to wear contact lenses, it inspired me to want to kick it over and wrestle with the wipe free(!?!?) brochure. The water spigot didn't look appetising either, it didn't help that an old gentleman unsure how it worked poked his finger in the nozzle. Get this, as they also do hearing tests I overheard a discussion about issuing a new hearing aid to an ageing client, they started at £350 and went up to £3000! Wow, for £3000 I'd want to hear mice fart at sixty feet. They didn't need a hearing aid to hear me say 'you got to be sitting me' or words to that effect.
Anyway it was pretty painless and they had added a crap video game where you looked at a red dot whilst they flashed random amounts of white dots around it. You had to say what you saw so for three helpless minutes I resembled a bingo caller with a bad memory. Two, one, two, two, three, house! Then it got silly, I changed eyes, not literally but you know what I mean and the test began again, unbelievably they used the same sequence and as I remembered it I was shouting out the answer before it flashed up. Got told off for that too.
But the biggest problem I always have is what frames to choose, invariably I always go for a very similar pair to what I already have, apart from once in 1990 when I chose a pair that made me look like a fly, it didn't help that I had a perm I suppose but that was the 90's.
You know how naive I am in an opticians when I tried this pair of glasses on and thought, its a bit tight but hmm, not bad at all, until it was pointed out to me that I was wearing a pair of Bob The Builders. That was quite lucky though as I nearly went for the Disney Princess ones. Why do so many pairs of glasses now resemble what elderly relatives were wearing in the late sixties? I tried a pair of Police ones on but, and I seriously believe this, the only person that looks good in them is the model on the posters, I looked like Tom Selleck minus the tash, tan and hair but with the added inclusion of crap teeth and a slightly wonky nose, I did however look like a P.I. or a pi**ing idiot.
Then I looked at the prices and again realised that my expectations would never be met, at £295 a pop I'd want to see newspaper print in London from the top of the Blackpool Tower. What's with all the chunky sides to them all anyway? It's the equivalent of placing two combs behind your ears. I tried a rimless pair with blue handles and it looked like I was carrying two blue sharpies behind my tabs, I half expected somebody to approach me and ask to borrow one, I'd imagine you would go through life fending off such questions. 'Can I borrow a pen... Ah, sorry, my mistake.'
Another problem, I wear glasses, I have to take my glasses off to try a new pair of glasses with no prescription lenses in them so basically I am blind unless of course I stand three inches from the mirror. So every pair I have ever bought has been based on what I could see on the bridge of my nose and now I had to consider chunky handles, it doesn't get any better does it.
Back to the beginning of the blog entry and the puff to eye, don't you find the machine a little bit vindictive? Yes I expect the 'puff' but the stupid machine doesn't puff when you expect it to so no matter how prepared you are I always end up banging my forehead against the top brace and then my chin on the bottom as I land only to open my eye as it takes another shot, is three shots really necessary or is it secretly recording your screwed up face so at optician parties (are they called Optiparties or Particians?) they show all the best over reaction footage from up and down the country.
Also I swear that my eyes wasn't playing tricks on me when I saw this on the chart you read out aloud.
H
K L
N M R
C K O C
Seriously, that last one is so small but so, so wrong, size matters in this case. I giggled, got told off for that too.
It's done for another two years but apparently I'm on the slippery slope downhill, after receiving the cheery news that it's all going to go to pot as it does with everybody and I'll gradually find myself mistaking onions for coconuts and colliding with walls as I go bifocal I question my ability to cope with two pairs of glasses in the future. I'm bad enough with one but two?
I didn't come away empty handed though, luckily they had one of those new fangled computer devices that take a picture of you wearing the glasses so you can compare them in screen, they did a computer simulation to find my perfect pair. Here it is, do they suit?
Perfect!
www.petersmithcollective.co.uk Home Of Foreverbunny and the Impossimals
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