I just got back from the optometrist. It was okay (thanks for asking), but upon reflection there’s some residual weirdness clinging to me. Allow me to elucidate. I’ve lived in central Jersey for almost three years now and I decided it was finally time to put my employer’s health care coverage to use on a local level.
See, for the previous seven years I’d lived in northern Jersey (on lovely Lake Hopatcong—I dare you to try and pronounce that properly, ‘cause even a decade later my parents still can’t say it right), which, if you’ve never been there is actually the antithesis of what you’d expect New Jersey to be (i.e., it’s not what I expected it to be when I moved here). Believe it or not, this state is not filled with oil refineries and burning smokestacks and eight-lane highways and other assorted industrial-wasteland-type detritus. I mean sure, that kind of shit surrounds the scary city of Newark—y’know, that ghetto you fly over on your way to JFK airport—but northern NJ actually lives up to its “Garden State” motto. So much so, in fact, that there’s nothing up there resembling civilization until you hit the Big Apple. Forget industrial wasteland. Northern NJ is just a plain old garden variety wasteland.
As such, I trusted no hillbilly doctor/dentist/massage therapist within a 50-mile radius to touch my body, short of a serious emergency (so even with my jugular spraying blood like a fountain I still might opt for a Band-Aid). Instead, I would take care of my medical needs whenever I flew back home to Indiana to visit my family. (Strangers I don’t trust. The old guy who’s been checking my “plumbing,” as he likes to call it, for the last 20 years I do trust.) But a few years ago my parents moved out of Indiana and for as much as I love Bloomington, buying a $300 plane ticket to visit my optometrist seemed kinda retarded. And I’m three years overdue for my checkup. (I realized this when I was suddenly unable to read Greedo’s subtitles in the original, non-Lucas-molested version of Star Wars. Time for some new glasses, bantha-poodoo!)
So a few months ago I asked around my office for some suggestions and got the answer I dreaded: no one I know particularly likes his/her optometrist. Awesome! But finally I settled for Dr. McShortpants, whom my colleague Laura suggests but does not necessarily recommend. (Laura’s eyes are so fucked up she doesn’t even use an optometrist anymore—she goes to an ophthalmologist instead, which is like the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. One is more expensive than the other.) Anyway, Laura used to see Dr. McShortpants but stopped going when it became clear that DMSP wasn’t correctly diagnosing her problem. But [and I quote], “You’re young, so she probably won’t be required to find anything seriously wrong with you anyway.” Super!
So I call to make an appointment. Back on April 12. Today was the first day she could fit me in. Strike one. So here it is three months later and I drive to the business park. Of course I can’t find a parking space, even though the parking lot is twice as big as the building it serves (this appears to be some kind of space-time/wormhole problem that will require Geordi LaForge’s expertise to unravel). I finally settle for parking in a ditch, and hope the truck parked next to it won’t be leaving anytime soon because he’ll probably take my bumper with him. I finally get inside the building (after getting trapped behind an old lady with the squeakiest walker I’ve ever heard) and sign in five minutes before my appointment. Twenty minutes later (actually not too bad!) I’m called back and hey, whattaya know, the assistant/technician (not sure of the terminology here) is actually cute and so I happily remove the first strike.
Cute Girl proceeds to check my eyesight in all the standard preliminary ways and I’m pretty proud of my performance, as if my not-as-bad-as-I-thought eyesight is a sign of attractiveness and I’m impressing her somehow. With each correctly identified letter she gives me a “good job!” or a “yeah!” the way you would encourage a shy dog with irritable bowels or something, but this doesn’t even phase me. I’m having a grand old time because reading things is something I’m good at. But then she fucks everything up by completely scaring the shit out of me:
Cute Girl: Now I’m going to numb your eyeballs with this stinging acid and jab at your corneas with this needle-like pointer. [Not what she really said, obviously, but certainly how I interpreted it.]
Me: [All willingness to please drains out of me as I get a panicked look on my face.] Um, what?
After assuring me it won’t hurt a bit she puts the drops in my eyes and proceeds to press on my eyeballs with this surgical-looking poker while holding my eyelids open with her thumb (thank god for this bit of human contact, ‘cause if she’d used those Clockwork Orange tongs on me I’d have run out of there like Paris Hilton at a “How to Form Complete Sentences for Fun and Profit” seminar). I get this weird sensation of my eyeball literally receding into my skull with each push and I’m thinking to myself, “Numb or not, this can’t be good for your eyes.” But she claims it’s to “check the pressure,” like I have steel-belted radials in my eye sockets. What would happen, I wonder, if the pressure wasn’t good? Would an air hose be involved? But it’s no concern of mine because apparently my pressure is fine. (Have you ever heard of this? My doc in good ol’ Indiana never done checked my eyeball pressure before….)
With my dignity pretty much shot (I think I whimpered a little each time she poked an eye) I gave up on trying to impress Cute Girl and let her finish up in silence. She put the dilating drops in and led me to another waiting room, saying Dr. McShortpants would be right with me.
Cut to half an hour later. Cute Girl comes back with an apologetic look on her face. “Let’s take a look at your eyes,” she says, staring into my pupils. “Almost there!” And now I know why there are no mirrors in this waiting room: because the near-total light blindness I’ve been experiencing tells me that my eyes were completely dilated 29 minutes ago and they don’t want me to call their bluff. In actuality, Dr. McShortpants is running behind, and it’s no wonder. During my time in the “back room” I was forced (no magazines in there for some stupid reason) to eavesdrop on several doctor-to-assistant conversations.
One doctor was giving his assistant driving directions to some party this weekend, and even without being able to see her reactions I could tell from her verbal responses that the assistant wasn’t following him one bit and had every intention of checking Mapquest at her earliest convenience. But the doctor kept on rambling. It literally took him six minutes to give these directions. It involved things like turning past “the second Arby’s on the right” (wha???) and “I can’t remember the name of the street, but it’s the only one with a blue sign.” All I kept thinking was, Thank god this fucker isn’t going to work on my eyes! So I wait patiently for Dr. McShortpants to arrive, which she does after another ten minutes. Not wanting to admit she’s fucking late, she looks at my pupils, too. “Okay, you’re all set,” she says. Yeah. Ragginfraggin…. So we go into the room with the SuperViewmaster and she proceeds to make me uncomfortable without even the aid of an eye-poking device:
DMSP: When’s the last time you were here?
Me: Um, never. [Jesus, lady—take a look at the chart why don’t you!]
DMSP: Oh! Nice to meet you! I’m Dr. McShortpants. [She shakes my hand very limply and instills me with assloads of confidence in her abilities as an optometrist, not to mention as a human being.] Do you wear glasses already?
Me: Yes.
DMSP: May I see them?
Me: Wouldn’t you know it? [Ingratiating smile.] I wear them every day to drive to work, and this is the first time ever that I’ve forgotten them.
DMSP: [Unfazed by ingratiating smile.] How did you get here?
Me: [Slight pause; not sure if this is a trick question.] I drove.
DMSP: Hm. [Consults chart filled out by Cute Girl.] Because you’re required by law to wear them when you drive. [She says this like she’s seriously considering calling the cops on me.]
Me: Oh.
DMSP: Anyway [as in, “way to go, asshole”], let’s get started. [As if I’m blocking her ability to do so in some way.] Have a seat. [I sit. She moves to face me and I realize, even with me sitting, she’s still pretty much looking up at me. This is when it hits me that she’s not only about four feet tall, but also that she looks like this really nerdy girl I knew in high school who used to give her dad a goodbye kiss whenever he drove her to school in the mornings. So, my optometrist is a school-girl midget with daddy issues. And now I know that I’ve finally crossed that dreaded threshold from being a kid surrounded by adults to being an adult surrounded by kids. I am my grandpa, with his calling every middle-aged man he meets “Sonny.” I can see it happening to me, at that moment, and yet I still don’t want this child standing in front of me to be in charge of my eyes. I’d rather have Cute Girl poke my corneas again, thankyouverymuch!]
DMSP: Wow, you’re really tall. Are you over six feet?
Me: Maybe. [Actually, I think I’m exactly six feet tall but of course I haven’t measured myself in years so I could be wrong. Who cares?]
DMSP: So, what, six-five? Six-six?
Me: [Suddenly I’m the tallest man on earth.] Um, no. Not quite.
DMSP: Okay. [She pauses on this longer than she ought to, and it takes me a second to realize that she’s not just making small talk, but that this information poses an authentic problem for her. I begin to worry that it could seriously impact my clarity of vision in some unforeseen way.] I’ll just stay standing. Easier that way. [As with Cute Girl, I have not impressed DMSP. My Uwe Blab-like stature is a serious inconvenience.]
Me: Okay. [Thinking, “Get a highchair if it’s such a hassle, you freakin’ midget!”]
DMSP: [Staring intently at my head.] Did you know you have an asymmetrical face?
Me: Yeah, thanks for mentioning it.
DMSP: Just making sure you knew [why this might be useful to me except as an ego deflater I have no idea]—your right ear is also a little higher than your left one.
Me: Got it.
DMSP: Your left eyelid is drooping a little, too. Is that new?
And so on…. But all this washed over me, really, until the end of the exam, at which point she asked me if the chosen lenses in the SuperViewmaster would “make me happy walking down the street.” I said yes, to which she replied, “Final answer?”
Is that goddamn show even on anymore?
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