Where the spare keys do the most good

Harvester of eyes, that’s me And I see all there is to see When I look inside your head Right up front to the back of your skull Well that’s my sign that you are dead And my list for you checks off as null I’m the harvester of eyes Here’s the start to my […]

Harvester of eyes, that’s me
And I see all there is to see
When I look inside your head
Right up front to the back of your skull

Well that’s my sign that you are dead
And my list for you checks off as null
I’m the harvester of eyes

Here’s the start to my day yesterday.

I had an eye appointment scheduled. And of course good eye doctors usually book weeks in advance; otherwise I’d have cancelled given that I’m way too busy right now for any damned thing like this. But I need new glasses and it’s been seven years since I had a real eye exam (we’re not counting the eye-check-o-mat guys at the one-hour perscription place).

So I take the morning off to go get the peepers poked at.

Of course, I get the time wrong. So I show up a half-hour late and wind up having to wait an hour for my appointment. Of course I didn’t bring my book, or my laptop, and I. DON’T. WAIT. WELL.

Finally, my doctor – who I think would be santa claus if he let his beard grow a little more and put on a red hat – gets to me and does the usual is this better/is that better thing, puts drops in my eyes, shines blue laser beams into the back of my brain, and generally pokes and prods my eyeballs ’til my head wants to ‘splode.

Then he writes me a ‘scrip, tells me I can go another year or two before I have to think about the dreaded B word (*cough*bifocal*cough*). Which is good because how punk-rock are bifocals, man?

So I pay up and am outta there.

But wait. Where are my car keys?

Well, where else? In the fucking ignition.

Now a couple data points.

First, I drive a jeep wrangler, which means that half the year the top and doors are off. So generally I can’t lock the can’t lock it. I have a lock box in the back for this reason, but I generally don’t leave anything in the car I would mind having stolen. Yet, for some reason, I decided to lock the door when I hopped out.

Second – and if you’ve had an eye check you know this – when you get your eyes checked, they do some sort of test that requires your pupils be ten-hits-acid-trip dilated. The result of this is that your vision gets all kinds of fucked up for several hours after.

Yesterday was an incredibly sunny, blue-sky warm spring day here in northern cali. Bright, bright, bright. And dilated pupils means light sensitive. Hangover/migraine sensitive has nuthin’ on this, think hangover plus migraine. My sun-glasses? In the car. With the keys.

So the first thing I think when I look in and see my keys, dangling, mocking me from the ignition (after I momentarily consider putting a fist through the window, which I know from experience fucking hurts), is, Call someone to bring the spare keys. And I think for a moment about where my spare Jeep key is.

You know where this is going. Admit it.

My spare key is in the center console, in the Jeep.

So what to do? I hear in Beatle voices from Yellow Saubmarine:


John: Maybe we should call a road service?

Paul: Can’t, no road.

Ringo: And we’re not sub… scribers.

Now another data point about the dilated pupils; the ability to focus in close goes to near zero. This isn’t so much an issue when you’re driving (though the bight light and the vague blurring makes driving a bit complicated). But it makes reading impossible. Which means that working my cell phone was complicated, and reading the numbers off my AAA card was almost impossible.

So I’m standing in the parking lot in Los Gatos, California, in the brilliant sun, attempting to read a card at full arm extension and dialing my cell phone by feel. And I’m thinking, I won’t ask for help, I can do this. ‘Cause that’s the kinda guy I am.

And then I’m waiting for tow-truck guy. And waiting, with my eyes closed because it’s too fucking bright, with my knit hat pulled down over my eyes cause it’s still too bright even under my eyelids. And waiting. And waiting.

Turns out, interestingly, that it isn’t that easy to break into Jeep doors. No quick slim-jim pop. The tow truck guy had to fiddle with the lock for about ten minutes to get it jacked. Plus he had some cool tattoos.

Finally, off and away, and home; where I can’t work because I’m still having halos and blurring and looking at the computer makes my head hurt. But at least it’s dark. I try going back to bed, but of course I can’t do that, I need to get to work, I’m getting calls from users who really really need help, now.

So I wind up at work, practically seeing trails and wondering what it would be like to be at work after eating six grams of mushrooms. I can see my boss wanting to ask me about the bats, but he refrains.

And that’s just the beginning of my day. Let’s not talk about the frustration of debugging someone else’s object oriented perl code.

13 thoughts on “Where the spare keys do the most good”

  1. Your experience is precisely why I wait far too long between eye appointments.

    Did they give you the “reverse dialation” drops, that are really nothing more than water? I can feel my doctor giggle when he puts that happy crap in my eyes.

    When I finally do break down and go in, I schedule nothing for the rest of the day because I know I’ll be useless.

    Sorry, dear. I’d bleed a bit for you if I thought it would make you feel better.

    😀

  2. Okay. Dude.
    1. You could not see
    2. You were driving yourself home
    3. wtf?

    Dying in a car accident is only punk rock if you’re high and it’s midnight in the arizona desert. Dying in a car accident is not punk rock if you’ve just had a conversation about bifocals.

  3. Rachel my sweet, the problem was only things closer than about a yard. If cars are closer than that, I seeing them clearly wasn’t going to make an awful lot of difference.

    On the other hand, if I were a jazz musician, dying in a car is pretty cool. Look at Scott laFaro and Clifford Brown. I’d get my own memorial album.

  4. Did they give you those disposable dark shades to wear? If you’re gonna die like an old man, you could at least go out looking like Roy Orbison.

  5. “Turns out, interestingly, that it isn’t that easy to break into Jeep doors.”

    Or Scions. Thankfully, I was stranded in the parking garage of Whole Foods. Had some coffee and gelato while I waited for AAA. But I was relegated to Dumb Broad ’cause I had no idea how to unlock the doors without using the unlock button (Scions apparently have an anti-theft thingy which prevents easy door opening using long bendy thingies).

  6. Watch out for those bats. They fly right into your pupils and eat your brain.

    Rachel said: “Dying in a car accident is only punk rock if you’re high and it’s midnight in the arizona desert”

    Yup. Now if you’re a headbanger, that’s different. Metallica saved my life. I’m still pulling cholla out of my ass.

  7. My eye doctor said I did pretty well in that I made it to 43 before I needed reading glasses. And that’s a pretty funny story. I’m glad I ride a bicycle. You can’t lock the keys in it.

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