You know “three strikes and you’re out!”, the classic baseball analogy?
Yeah, I bet you never expected to hear THAT down at your local DMV…
“Uhhh…Q…E…B–no, no, I mean D…and, um…7?”
I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked nervously at the kind old lady running the show at the Morton County DMV. Sure, it was the middle of the summer, but it wasn’t heat-sweat that was drenching me–this was stress-sweat.
“Oh, Sweetie, that was so close, but still not quite right,” she said as gently as possible.
No matter how nicely she broke the news to me, though, the cold hard truth of the matter was that I was on the precipice of losing my legal privilege to operate a motor vehicle.
“Ummm,” I hemmed for a moment, trying to buy myself some time for some subsequent hawing. “Say, since I’m just renewing my license, are you absolutely sure I can’t use my glasses for this eye test?”
“Are you going to be driving with those glasses on?” she asked, inspecting the frames of the pair I had brought with me just in case my contact lenses became too unbearable to wear. “I’m pretty sure those weren’t in style since 1994.”
For the first time in an interaction otherwise full of the loving kindness you would expect from a rural Kansas granny archetype, I must say: I felt targeted.
“And…?” I said, somewhat defensively.
“It’s 2001. And from the looks of you, I’d say you haven’t worn them since you were in what? Eighth grade?”
What can I say? The old lady had me pegged almost to a tee. But I wasn’t going to let her win that easily.
“Ma’am, I’ll have you know that I wore those right up until I got contacts halfway through my Sophomore year,” I replied, trying to feign indignity.
“Nevertheless, young man, I need you to answer the question: are you going to go out cruising to pick up young lassies wearing your eighth grade glasses? Because if you use them for this test, then you will be legally obligated to wear them then as well–and you could get arrested if you get caught driving bare-faced.”
She gave me a stern look, like she was trying to scare me straight.
“Arrested? Really? That doesn’t sound quite right…” I said with a hint of skepticism.
“Okay, so maybe not arrested, but you could get a ticket.”
“Oh. Okay then,” I said quietly. “How about I try putting my contact lenses back in?”
“You can do whatever you want, but you only get two more attempts before I will be legally required to fail you.”
I sighed heavily. Fml, I thought.
“Okay, give me a moment…”
However, after fumbling with my right contact for nearly 5 minutes before getting it to stay in, I had to immediately pop it back out.
“Ow, ow, ow! I can’t. I just can’t.”
“What’s wrong with your contacts anyways?” she asked with genuine concern.
I gave her a sheepish look.
“I may have gone a few extra months before swapping out my last pair of ’30-day lenses’…so, yeah, they’re kinda starting to bother me,” I related to her.
“Oh, in my line of work, I see that all the time, but usually it’s not a problem. Exactly how many months has it been?” she inquired.
I paused to count backwards to when I had last gone to the eye doctor, and then counted forward 6 months to when I should have renewed my supply, but didn’t because…y’know…who had the time or money for that when you’re a poor college freshman?
“Oh,” was all I could say as I realized I had really lost track of time and that it had been much longer I had thought it had been. “Uh, I plead the fifth!”
“Okie dokie, suit yourself. I guess that’s not really my problem anyways. How about you give the bottom row another whirl without the glasses or contacts. You’ve stalled long enough, wouldn’t you say?”
“Ok…here goes: Q (or maybe O), E…let’s say ‘S’ this time…and I think that last one is a trick question, isn’t it? It’s a question mark, not a 7, amiright?”
“Oooh, so sorry, but not even close. And I can’t accept a ‘this or maybe that’ response. You have to pick a lane, if you will. Now…one last time. Take all the time you need, alright?”
At least she was rooting for me, even if she ultimately had to flunk me.
Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention, this was happening halfway through the summer that I had planned on spending working with my dad, but after 6 weeks of co-farming, our relationship had been strained to the point of breaking. So in a day or two I would be heading back to Manhattan (KS) where I was going to college. I had to renew my license while was back home or else I would be at the mercy of my friends for transportation until Christmas.1Note: in retrospect, I’m not sure it is true that I could only renew my license in my hometown/home county. I’m pretty sure I could renew it any Kansas DMV, but I guess I was too young and stupid at 20 years old to know it was much less complicated than I was making it.
I dropped an f-bomb under my breath. The pressure was almost too much.
“Q. I’m definitely going to go with Q for the first one.”
“Good, good” she said.
“And if I squint a little bit–“
“No squinting!” she said sternly.
“Oh, right…right,” I said, but it was already too late. I couldn’t unsee what I was pretty sure I had seen. “I think that second letter is actually B.”
I paused for affirmation, but she remained silent. Uh-oh.
“And…D…?” I half-asked, thinking that maybe I had had it right the first time.
“Take your time…”
I took that comment to mean that maybe I should try that one again.
“No, on second thought maybe that’s another B,” I wagered.
“Okay, well that doesn’t make any sense. Why would we repeat the same letter back-to-back on one of these tests? That would just be cruel and unusual,” she said, obviously hinting once again that maybe I wasn’t quite nailing it.
Whew. I sat back for a second and took a deep breath, before leaning forward and sneaking in a quick squint.
“Oh…I see now. It’s an O.”
I paused again, looking for some feedback, but she was completely expressionless.
“And that last letter?” she asked.
“Maybe that’s a 1?”
She hesitated for a moment before breaking the silence.
“You passed.”
I let out a huge sigh of relief. I couldn’t believe I had passed, because in all honesty, I wasn’t confident in any of my guesses. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that I had not got them all right, and she told a little white lie out of the kindness of her heart, but we best not bother our pretty little heads entertaining such notions.)
“Congratulations. Now, let’s get your picture and get you out of my hair–er, I mean out the door.”
Afterwards, when I was sitting in the privacy of my car, I put my eighth-grade glasses on and took a closer look at my picture on the newly renewed license.
“Wha-a-a?!?” I exclaimed upon discovering that my eyes were waaaay more irritated with my aborted attempts to wear my contacts than I could have imagined. I mean, I freakin’ looked like Nick Nolte’s mugshot (that technically wouldn’t be taken for another year in 2002):
“I really gotta do something about those old contact lenses…I look like I’m drunk–at best!Though it really looks like I’m all hopped up on crack-cocaine…”
The point of the story is that maybe, just maybe, it’s not the best idea to go 16+ months wearing the same pair of 30-day contact lenses. Even if you are a poor college student, for the love of all that is holy, please, take good care of yourself.
And spoiler alert: this story appears not have a happy ending. A month or so later I finally went to an eye doctor, who promptly informed that I had Stage 3 blepharitis–I swear I’m not making that condition up–and that I would never be able to wear anything but expensive-ass disposable 1-day contact lenses for the rest of my life…and that’s how I ended up switching back to being a glasses type of guy pretty much full-time. Yup, I was back to being 100% nerdling, all because I was too cheap and/or lazy and/or “that doesn’t look like anything to me” attitude-having to deal with the problem in a timely manner.
However, upon further refraction–er, I mean ‘reflection’–in my later years, I have come to the conclusion (with the help of my very astute and affirming Beautiful Bride), that I’m actually much more handsome and eye-catching to the ladies with glasses. Imagine that without them, my white af face combined with my near-translucent eyebrows and facial hair, my visage is vast, featureless desert, save for my beautiful blue eyes.
But with glasses, there is interesting contrast that catches one’s eyes and subconsciously causes their brain to say “hey, why don’t you let your gaze lingering just a bit longer on this charming fella.”
It’s like in the Big Lebowski, for me, glasses are The Dude’s rug that “really tied the room together…”
I know that we’ve strayed pretty far afield here, but why not we end this little chat with that very clip (note: contains adults words, Mother discretion is advised…)
Content created on: 29/31 August 2024 (Thurs/Sat)
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