Yeah, it doesn’t quite work. Oh well.
After that, he and I went to the optician. See, I’ve been complaining about my glasses giving me headaches. Now, I understand that your first instinct is to assume that my eyes have gotten worse. Suppress that instinct. It’s wrong. My eyes have improved.
The last time I had my eyes checked was about three years ago. Then, my nearsighted eyes had a prescription of -2.25 in both eyes along with astigmatism corrections. Starting two years ago, ish, my eyes started improving. I have no idea why. I don’t get it either. It just is. Accept it and move on.
But me, being who I am, procrastinated seeing an eye doctor. I just couldn’t be bothered. I wear my glasses only when I’m out and about and need them to drive. You know, things like that. But if I’m at home either reading or working on my computer, forget it.
Well, things have progressed to the point that, some days, for the first couple of hours after I wake up, I don’t need my glasses at all to see into the distance and to be able to read signs a hundred feet away. This is also very cool. Since coming to Sri Lanka, my vision appeared to improve even more.
And I was getting way more headaches.
It was time to take the bull by the horns. Get a new prescription. Hence the whole optician thing.
Here, if you see an optician, that’s included in the price of glasses or replacement lenses. Eye doctors are a whole other ball game. Fahim needed replacement contacts, so it made sense for us to go at the same time. Plus the optician he’s been to before was close enough to the newspaper that it made sense to do it today.
The opticians store was small small small small small. The whole thing including examining room was, near as I could tell, about eight feet wide and perhaps a dozen feet deep. The examining room was about four feet wide and about eight feet deep. Seriously cramped.
The optician looked at Fahim’s eyes first, then hauls me into his tiny little cubicle.
He wants to see what my existing prescription is, of course. Of course. Ask me if I’m surprised. They all do this. Fine. I hand over the glasses and tell him that the lenses are too strong. After figuring out how strong they are, he starts off with testing my vision with lenses around where the old ones are. Of course. He’s gotta start somewhere. I keep telling him they’re too strong and finally we get down to where they’re starting to feel comfortable. Finally he tells me the resulting prescription – both eyes are the same at -0.75. So. From -2.25 to -0.75. That’s pretty cool, don’t’cha think?
I barely need glasses anymore. Who knows? At this rate, within the year, my eyes might be completely fine on their own with no more need of glasses ever again. Yeah, I’ll keep hoping and wishing.
So we ordered replacement lenses for one of my existing pairs of glasses, complete with all the fancy dancy coatings to protect my eyes. Ya know. Things like that. And Fahim orders his replacements contacts.
One other thing happened while I was in the examining room with the optician. First thing ya gotta understand is that the optician is young. Perhaps Fahim’s and my age, perhaps younger. All these Asians look way younger than they really are, so I figure that, if he looks like he’s probably 28, he’s probably actually something like 38. Anyway, he’s a young guy. But I digress.
The point being that, while I was in there getting my eyes examined (resist the urge to replace eyes with head), young optician guy groped my hair. Yeah, I know, it sounds odd, but how else do I put this? I had some hair, apparently, hanging over my eyes and getting in his way. So he pushed it out of the way. Then there was some more, so he moved it, too. Or, at least, that’s what he claimed. From my perspective, I thought he was groping my hair. Not initially, though. At first, I thought he was doing exactly what he said he was doing. But then, when it happened again and again, I really wondered.
Fahim paid for glasses and contacts and we left. I told Fahim what happened, and he treated it like it was no big deal. I thought he would have wanted to slug the guy. But no.
A few days later (remember, I’m writing this in November after Book in a Month is over), I mention it again, and that’s when Fahim says that he thinks the guy didn’t mean anything by it. Why, dearest, do you say that? Because he was doing the same thing to Fahim. Fahim thinks the guy was being effeminate. Or strange. Or something like that. Oh. Uh. Well, it’s true – it does put a whole other light on the situation, and yeah, I do feel much better.
