Seeing Red

The gist of it is that you'd be branded as the town leper.


Sore eyes---Conjunctivitis if you'd like to come off like one of those pompous sorts who always insist on using  "Photocopy" instead of the very proletarian "zerox"---can really hurt you in many ways. And I'm not talking about waking up in the morning feeling as if your eyeballs are about to pop out of their sockets like that disgusting film sequence in Gov. Schwarzenegger's Total Recall. 





Like getting stuck inside a bus in a 4 hour trip with  no possible means of stopovers, and it hits you: A subtle tingling sensation at the very core of your stomach; nudging, even playful at first., like a fart that's itching to get out as silently as possible. Then a sudden gut-wrenching pain that demands your full attention. And you're barely 45 minutes into the trip.


At first I thought it was just your average, shampoo-irritated red eye after bathing. I mean how would I know? The handbook says you'd have to wake up with your eyes sealed off by a disgusting sticky discharge with enough adhesive strength to repair broken vases. I went off to work thinking it'd just disappear like most of my bathroom mishaps. When a colleague commented on the grounds for termination because of smoking grass, I knew I was in trouble.



That the damned things stated itching only confirmed it. Before you know it, everyone starts telling you to go home lest you contaminate the workplace and spoil everyone's great time. Fine, it gives a sort of notoriety and fame that can't be achieved by endless preening and name-dropping like most guys at the office do, anyway. 


The eyes are the windows to the soul. 


I'm using tobramycin to heal my soul.