"Old Fashion" Eye Exam

 I had headaches in the 7th grade. The eye doctor said I was straining my eyes to see the chalkboard. They put me in glasses. Terrible. I kept them for about a month and tossed them. My vision always seemed a little blurry, but it didn't bother me. When I became pregnant with my son I found out you could get your eyes checked for free so since I hadn't gotten that done in 10 years I decided to go for an exam. You know that machine that shoots a puff of air into your eyes to test the pressure behind them? That day the machine was broken. I said "Oh, good. I hate that thing." They said "Oh, we still have to do a test. We'll just do it the old fashion way." Ok.... I wasn't worried yet. Then 3 nurses took me into a room with a dentist style chair. What are we doing?? I'm worried at this point. They gave me eye drops that were supposed to numb my eyes. Which is a totally weird feeling.  It's like....it's like biting into a York Peppermint Patty! Not exactly. It's like standing on top of a mountain in Alaska though. Not in the refreshing way either. More like extreme cold burning your eyeballs and making you cry tears of antifreeze. Yeah, like that. Then 2 of the nurses hold my arms down. ♪Panic!♪ They pull out this thing that looks like a giant pen with a clicker on the end. They tell me I must look directly at the "probe" the entire time or they have to start over. So they put this device on my pupil. Fucking ON it. And they click the button 10 times. Each time it pushed my eye back into my socket. They click it 10 times for each eye and it has to be right on the pupil or they start over. I was traumatized. And blind as it turns out.
 They actually asked me if I drove there. I thought they were joking. They were not. They also asked me if I was color blind. I said "No, why?" and they said "So, you can see the red of the stop signs before you get to them?" ??? I said "Are you suggesting I can't read STOP on a stop sign?" Turns out I can't see anything more than 6 feet away. Nice. I didn't notice the difference when I was inside the doctor's office, but when I walked outside it was amazing. For the first time in my life I could see individual leaves on the trees and shingles on the roof tops. They must have thought I was having an acid trip in the parking lot. Ridiculous! I never get an eye exam without first asking "Is the puff thingy working today?" Never.