The blue-eyed summer

In June the children and I made our yearly pilgrimage to the Richmond Chinese Night Market where I bought blue colored prescripiton contact lenses. That very evening I put them on and went around the house with my blue magalocorneas and felt that I had somehow reinvented myself at age 46. I felt more attractive, sexier and maybe, just maybe, a little bit skinnier. Yep, you can get all that in a tiny $15 package!! :)

Before everyone goes "OMG I cannot believe you did that!! you will injure your eyes" I will tell you NO!! they do not injure your eyes. First, cheap colored prescription contact lenses improved my vision without harm (as scientifically confirmed by my very own very annoyed Optometrist who HAD to see me on a Sunday morning to documente the miracle) and let me tell you, ONCE you see WELL (back to hawk-like vision) you can NEVER not see well again. For many years I have asked this same Optometrist to make my vision "crisp", as crisp as a vascular surgeon may have in order to do complicated surgery on small vessels, but he kept saying it could not be done. He was baffled at the change and said "there was no science to explain the improvement" Whatever, it WORKED!!

As an aside this reminds me of my grandfather Raul who had worn glasses all of his life and eventually had cataract surgery at age 70 or so. Well, lo and behold his new eyesight was comparable to that of an eagle and when he woke up from surgery the first thing he saw were his wife's knees who were quite calloused as she was a devout catholic woman who attended mass daily and prayed while kneeling practically all of the days of her life. But anyway I digress, as I said, he wakes up, opens his eyes and the first thing he says to her is: "WHAT IS THAT on your knees??!!" (proof of his very poor prior vision if he could not even see his wife's knees, right?). Her very quick and succint answer "Oh, be quiet. They are callouses from kneeling and praying for YOU!" I loooooove that story.

To contine with the blue eyes, I will inform you that this eye change also led to an unexpected social behaviour experiment. To note, most people DO NOT pay attention to details. I cannot tell you how many times a good friend or colleague would stare at my face with this far away confused look before realizing that I had new fake bue eyes. Those of use trained in dysmorphology - WE PAY ATTENTION! This is our every day bread and butter, diagnosis of a particular disorder can be exclusively based on eye findings, be it color, Waardenburg syndrome or shape, Ohdo syndrome to name a couple. In regards to this social behaviour, one of my work colleagues (not a dysmorphologist) had me wondering for half a day if I had in some way offended her because she kept looking but not really looking at me until I asked: "Have I done something to upset you?" and she answered: "No, but there is something weird about you today" "Oooooh I now have blue eyes" and then her demeanor changed and an big "Ohhhhh" of recognition followed that put an end to all of the speculation of an offense on my part and an end to the weird looks on hers.

So to end this little diatribe, September is here and I am back to brown. I don't know if I will stay brown or maybe try something else, grey, green ...... the possibilities are endless. After all, there is not much, except some very painful and expensive cosmetic surgery that may in the end have me looking like one of those duck-faced Vancouver Housewives on TV that can provoke such a "feel-good" change at 46 eh?