Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Lasik Vision Correction: Not so Elective After All

My upcoming Lasik eye surgery is a matter of survival. As an emergency kit stowed in a hallway closet is peace of mind, my laser vision will be one step to ultimate survival. If the Armageddon happens, I will be able to see. And being able to see, will make me a superior being to those that will have to rely on contacts and glasses in a do-over earth. Contacts will dry out, irritate eyes and have no place to store overnight. Saline solution will become a crutch currency and the wreckages of Walgreen's will be never alone for the constant shuffling of debris from the ocularly dependent.
Those with glasses can match my stride if their frames were not blown off their face in the blast. But soon the glasses will break or be misplaced or be blown off the face.
With my eyesight, others will join my coven of survivors. As their leader, I will reach out and befriend other laser vision survivors with tales of my own elective corrective vision surgery. And we will be friends. Eagle eye friends. I will befriend the remaining 2 eagles on barren earth and my eyes will speak to them. My laser vision eyes will communicate to the soul of the eagle. And then I will know why it is bald.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Fountain of Youth or Hey! Pizza Face!

A sucker is born every minute and happy birthday to me. Now a month into my 25th year and as people older than myself like to point out, "you're a quarter of a century now," I am well aware that I am supposed to or at least pretend to be an adult. But what do adults do, I wonder? Watch the news? Check, I can't help that since a certain date of alarm we've all be very aware of breaking news with the 24hr news networks. What else am I suppose to do? Get old, I'm down with that, or at least I thought I was.
Peering into my toothpaste-splattered mirror, my vanity erupted into worry. Do I have to get a face-lift? How will I pay for that? Wait a minute; I don't even want to go! As quoted myself after the infamous 2001 knee reconstruction, "surgery sucks." Quicker than Quakers, my worry lines eased into a self-assured smug, I realized I had already turned the clock so far back it was a sundial. Across my Irish/German/English/Danish and foremost Scottish cheekbones stood the fountain of youth. I am the proud owner, shall I say curator or cultivator of a magnificent crop of sturdy and immovable blackheads, occasionally visited by their much beefier cousins; pimples, zits, blemishes and as the British say spots. My skin looks more the pop-star-lusting pre-teen than any card-carrying twenty-something. On the edge of embracing my chronic torrential acne, I balked, did the years and dollars I spent attempting to grind, medicate, squeeze and, my favorite,
visualize them away mean nothing? What about the hours of recreational dermatological excavations in the shower? I stood in light boxes for you, endured freezing treatments and was filled full of years of problematic pills to eradicate my acne. And yes, I did the Accutane and no, it didn't work. But I did enjoy the novel length waivers and cautions I had to sign in order to take the drug. My developing years were plagued by my constant epidermal eruptions, causing clichéd self esteemed. Now I take no "miracle pills" and may have a little too much self-esteem (if that's possible). Surprised at myself with the apparent lack of concern for my destined to be defective complexion, I realized I was an adult; scratch that, a quarter centenarian. I guess I had perspective, and I always thought that meant a vanishing point. And it did because what's a zit on my forehead? Nothing, if anything just another reason to be asked for my ID and
questioned about its authenticity.
I can say now that time was the answer; the battlefield of my face has been quiet. Occasionally bumps rise again like a long forgotten rebellion, threatening forests of hair follicles. Relatively soon, they retreat, the relinquishing their strategic pore holdings and leaving their protest signs in the sebum. What do I have to do to maintain this pallor peace? Toxic astringents? Benzoly peroxide bombings? Slaughters with salicylic acid?