Opticians

Having returned home from the doctor today, I settled down to enjoy a nice reservance from social behaviour and engaged myself in one of my favourite online games. Shortly after jumping off a mountain to avoid death (something which, thinking about it in more detail, probably wasn't a good idea), I received a phone call from my good friend Chris, whining and moaning about his day. I for one used to actually enjoy coursework moderation day due to the lack of school, but alas, the poor lad had to go to the opticians. Being the only member of my family that does not wear glasses (besides the dog, but disturbing fetishes aside...), a fact that gets bottles thrown at me at family gatherings. However the opticians still check me out once every couple of years (which is considerably more than most females do, nudge nudge, wink wink, choking on my own pessimism) and I am no stranger to the musky smell of glass cleaner.

An awful lot of people wear glasses. Most of them use them for the practical reason of needing them to have vision that does not match that of a goldfish on painkillers (RIP, Goldy) while others wear them to look retarded for attention. Often both is the case. Either way, the only way to know if you need glasses without fancy self-diagnosis is your local optician, the man or woman who is paid to gaze into your eyes for long periods of time and shine things in them, which makes you wonder why opticians are often highly regarded as the people who make your eyes hurt the most (note that Nintendo breathe a sigh of relief at this point - give us Super Smash Brothers Brawl, you bastards!) but nevertheless. Just like being told you have fifteen and a half seconds to live, the worst part is the wait. The wait for the opticians is somewhere between paint drying in a hurricane and the wait for Super Smash Brothers Brawl in the UK (easy, Rai), which is a pretty freaking long period of time (if you hadn't guessed).

My brother is the newest 'blindie' in the family, and I recall having to wait for them to finish with his eyes the last time I visited the opticians. I passed the time with a book about optical illusions which made me contemplate suicide and wondering if the receptionist was wearing a wig. Opticians have the strange effect of making my vision actually worse for a short period of time, something which is strange considering the amount of time I've tortured my eyes over the years with video games, caffeine and hardcore insomnia. The one thing that really steams me about the optician is that my eyesight is TERRIBLE. Not many people know this, but my concentration is jiggered and this has near hindered me in the past, yet my optician claims I have 2o-2o vision. Or maybe I wouldn't, if he BLOODY CHANGED THE TEST ONCE IN A WHILE. Seriously, I can remember all the answers.

Oh, and it wasn't a wig. It smiled at me though.