Where the spare keys do the most good

Harvester of eyes, that’s me
And I see all there is to see
When I look inside your head
Right up front to the back of your skull

Well that’s my sign that you are dead
And my list for you checks off as null
I’m the harvester of eyes

Here’s the start to my day yesterday.

I had an eye appointment scheduled. And of course good eye doctors usually book weeks in advance; otherwise I’d have cancelled given that I’m way too busy right now for any damned thing like this. But I need new glasses and it’s been seven years since I had a real eye exam (we’re not counting the eye-check-o-mat guys at the one-hour perscription place).

So I take the morning off to go get the peepers poked at.

Of course, I get the time wrong. So I show up a half-hour late and wind up having to wait an hour for my appointment. Of course I didn’t bring my book, or my laptop, and I. DON’T. WAIT. WELL.

Finally, my doctor – who I think would be santa claus if he let his beard grow a little more and put on a red hat – gets to me and does the usual is this better/is that better thing, puts drops in my eyes, shines blue laser beams into the back of my brain, and generally pokes and prods my eyeballs ’til my head wants to ‘splode.

Then he writes me a ‘scrip, tells me I can go another year or two before I have to think about the dreaded B word (*cough*bifocal*cough*). Which is good because how punk-rock are bifocals, man?

So I pay up and am outta there.

But wait. Where are my car keys?

Well, where else? In the fucking ignition.

Now a couple data points.

First, I drive a jeep wrangler, which means that half the year the top and doors are off. So generally I can’t lock the can’t lock it. I have a lock box in the back for this reason, but I generally don’t leave anything in the car I would mind having stolen. Yet, for some reason, I decided to lock the door when I hopped out.

Second – and if you’ve had an eye check you know this – when you get your eyes checked, they do some sort of test that requires your pupils be ten-hits-acid-trip dilated. The result of this is that your vision gets all kinds of fucked up for several hours after.

Yesterday was an incredibly sunny, blue-sky warm spring day here in northern cali. Bright, bright, bright. And dilated pupils means light sensitive. Hangover/migraine sensitive has nuthin’ on this, think hangover plus migraine. My sun-glasses? In the car. With the keys.

So the first thing I think when I look in and see my keys, dangling, mocking me from the ignition (after I momentarily consider putting a fist through the window, which I know from experience fucking hurts), is, Call someone to bring the spare keys. And I think for a moment about where my spare Jeep key is.

You know where this is going. Admit it.

My spare key is in the center console, in the Jeep.

So what to do? I hear in Beatle voices from Yellow Saubmarine:

John: Maybe we should call a road service?

Paul: Can’t, no road.

Ringo: And we’re not sub… scribers.

Now another data point about the dilated pupils; the ability to focus in close goes to near zero. This isn’t so much an issue when you’re driving (though the bight light and the vague blurring makes driving a bit complicated). But it makes reading impossible. Which means that working my cell phone was complicated, and reading the numbers off my AAA card was almost impossible.

So I’m standing in the parking lot in Los Gatos, California, in the brilliant sun, attempting to read a card at full arm extension and dialing my cell phone by feel. And I’m thinking, I won’t ask for help, I can do this. ‘Cause that’s the kinda guy I am.

And then I’m waiting for tow-truck guy. And waiting, with my eyes closed because it’s too fucking bright, with my knit hat pulled down over my eyes cause it’s still too bright even under my eyelids. And waiting. And waiting.

Turns out, interestingly, that it isn’t that easy to break into Jeep doors. No quick slim-jim pop. The tow truck guy had to fiddle with the lock for about ten minutes to get it jacked. Plus he had some cool tattoos.

Finally, off and away, and home; where I can’t work because I’m still having halos and blurring and looking at the computer makes my head hurt. But at least it’s dark. I try going back to bed, but of course I can’t do that, I need to get to work, I’m getting calls from users who really really need help, now.

So I wind up at work, practically seeing trails and wondering what it would be like to be at work after eating six grams of mushrooms. I can see my boss wanting to ask me about the bats, but he refrains.

And that’s just the beginning of my day. Let’s not talk about the frustration of debugging someone else’s object oriented perl code.