Contact Sport

I have recently become a wearer of contact lenses, and suddenly I too can see what I actually look like. This is not as vain a comment as it sounds - I have been wearing glasses since I was fifteen, so the thrill of discovering that trees actually have individual leaves and branches and are not just an undifferentiated mass of green is some time in the past. The discovery of of how I appear with correctly focused eyesight and without glasses all over my face is, however, a revelation. It's quite extraordinary: I get up in the morning looking fine, poke myself in the eye a couple of times, and bam! when I look in the mirror again I have big bags under my eyes. I suppose it might have been better to start this contact lense carry on before there were actually any wrinkles or grey hair to see, but never mind - now I can keep a good careful track of them.
When I first got contacts about a fortnight ago I thought I'd never be able to use the blasted things without spending twenty agonizing minutes grimacing goggle-eyed and scrunch-faced into a magnifying shaving mirror every morning and twice as long at night. Now I whack the things in with no difficulty and, I am proud to report, a minimum of clothing fluff adherents. I still didn't like taking the out much, until I discovered the trick at about midnight last night. Now, why opticians give you all this tosh about how contacts aren't suitable for people whose "lifestyle" puts them at a high risk of reeling home guttered after 16 hours and dropping into bed with their poor dehydrated corneas encased in clingfilm I don't know. These are exactly the people for whom they are perfect, because the easy way to trouble-free contact lense removal, I can conclusively state, is to be drunk. No better time to poke yourself in the eye than when your reactions are so slow that someone could offer to pluck them out altogether and you'd be one eye down and one to go before you had the presence of mind to wonder whether it was a good idea.