Pants on Fire
"I knew I was lying. The doctor knew I was lying. I knew the doctor knew I was lying, yet I was a runaway train at this point, utterly unstoppable."
I am excellent in high-pressure situations; I know this about myself. My ability to maintain my shit during great chaos is a source of pride.
When everything’s aflame, when the stakes are high, when the results matter, I have the ability to narrow my focus and get the job done. When the only way out is through, you can count on me to lead.
When the stakes are low?
I am far less effective.
Case in point, I failed my eye exam yesterday… rather spectacularly.
This was basically me in the Costco optical department.
I am already a cheater when it comes to my vision. I buy the daily wear lenses and then… I wear them for two days. I am gaming the system by getting TWICE the use out of them.
I researched it to see if this was safe and I ran across the following. On a message board, someone wrote: “Would you use the same piece of Saran Wrap to rewrap a tuna sandwich?”
I think the poster was implying it was gross and unsanitary, but my answer was a highly pragmatic and non-wasteful “immediate yes,” ergo my daily wears are two-days wear because of a single opinion on how someone would maintain a fish-based repast.
Anyway, I didn’t have my shit together enough to make an appointment in a timely manner and I ran out of my daily wear contact lenses. While I do not recommend it, your daily wear lenses can be fortnightly wear if needed.
I showed up at my appointment yesterday and the first thing I did was give the assistant the wrong insurance. I was convinced we had the VSP plan, but that was three insurances ago.
Well, shit.
Then I forgot to tell the assistant I was wearing my contacts (as I had my reading glasses on my head, she assumed they were my regular glasses), so we did a bunch of the testing and the tech marveled at my vision improvement since my last exam.
I finally admitted I forgot to remove my lenses, so we had to do everything over. I added that to my apology list. Then the assistant asked if I’d brought my regular glasses to the exam so she could check the prescription and of course I did not.
For those of you keeping score, I was 0 for 3 at this point and I hadn’t even seen the doctor yet.
When I got into the doctor’s chair, I essentially reenacted George Michael’s moment because EVERYTHING LOOKED THE SAME and no one said, “Maybe it’s easier if you just focus on one letter instead of the whole line.” As it’s not in my nature to say “better” or “worse,” each answer came with its own narrative arc and I was powerless to stop all the words spilling out of my fat mouth as I was already in a full panic.
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