Eyes.

I have this self conscious thing about the way I look at people. Not looking at them dead on, because that's easy enough, but if you are on the side of me and I'm turning my head to look at you, I'm pretty sure I look just like the dramatic hamster. I know my eyes get super wide and my eyebrows go up in the air and it's not out of surprise or panic - it's because of my glasses. If I'm looking sidways at you, you're probably falling into that nether zone of non-glass/wire rim where nothing is focused and there are obstructions all over the place, making it impossible to react appropriately to any incoming facial expression or talking point. I still haven't mastered the side glance with these glasses that I've had since 9th grade. It's like every single time I look to the side, my eyes are suddenly surprised by this cage they find themselves in and can't decide if they're going to look up or down or out or to the side even MORE, which is undoubtedly the most off-putting expression you can throw at someone. I feel like whenever someone is casually trying to get my attention, "Hey, Jacky?" my eyes turn to them and scream "WHAT oh my GOD where ARE WE what's HAPPENING hey, there are glasses here! NEXT CHALLENGE! wait, that's too much, back it down...ahem, yes?"

Then my head tries to adjust by turning even more which gives me this terrible cheek-smash neck gobble along with crazy eyes, and I realize this too slow as its happening so the rest of my body follows my head to try to compensate for crazy eyes and chipmunk cheek, and all of a sudden I'm doing this Frankenstein upper body turn like some Egyptian hieroglyph.

I remember when I first got my glasses. Well, no I don't. I remember the days leading up to getting my glasses. I was in chemistry class and Miss Whatsername who got married and became Mrs. Mudd was writing on the overhead projector. Do they still have overhead projectors and chalkboards? Because I've been hearing some crazy stuff about smartboards and handheld clickers. Anyway, Miss Whatsername was writing on the overhead projector and I couldn't see it, but not because it was fuzzy. Because it was red. For some reason, this sweet little hippie woman who was probably only as old as I am now with hair down to the backs of her knees (until she cut it when we were in 11th grade and caused an uproar with her fan club) - for some reason, this chick would only write in red. I don't get it. Red is such an angry color. Red makes a statement that I don't feel chemistry makes. Chemistry seems like a blue discipline to me. Math is black, because it is like the death of my soul. I am so glad there are math people around so I don't have to math all the time. Man, that would suck.

So she would write in red all the time, and I'd be at the back of the class with my long hair and unusually sweaty underarms, writing in my 3 ring binder with the loose leaf paper in it with a mechanical bic pencil (you know the black ones with the different color shirt clips? I would save the purples clips. I don't know why. I always thought their erasers were better, and god knows you don't want to use a good eraser. You hoard it. It's public school law. And then you find your best eraser again when you're 20 and it's a rock hard piece of leather covered in pulverized lead pencil dust. Life is cruel sometimes.) and I couldn't see anything on the projector. When she would use the blue pen, I'd see it. I could see the black pen. The green pen was pushing it, but that red pen, man. And it was just me, too. Everyone else was A-ok with the red pen. It made me worry for a while I was color blind. But I did some research (the old fashioned way - by going to the school library and getting one of those paper bookmarks you had to shove into the stacks to mark where you got your book from) and I found that color blindness is mostly a male affliction, although women have been known to suffer from it. I don't remember how I ended up going to the eye doctor and getting my first classes but not being able to see red overhead pen had something to do with it.

I'm not color blind. I just have a brain that misbehaves. Once in psychology class, the teacher was testing students to see if they matched up with the norm for memory recollection. Basically, when you are asked to recall a certain type of memory your eyes will look up, down, or sideways depending on where in your brain the memory is stored. So if you are asked to recall a melody your eyes will look toward the part of your brain that remembers music. If you are asked to recall a mathematical formula or do an equation your eyes will look toward the lobe of your brain that handles math. It's all very fascinating stuff, and he tested 10 students. I was one of them. And as he graphed the results there was one little dot on the graph that always plotted in the opposite quadrant to all the other dots. So when everyone's eyes looked right, this person's eyes looked left. When everybody looked down, this person looked up. The teacher asked us to guess who the person was who had the backwards brain, and everybody guessed the dyslexic, didn't-give-a-shit football playing kid in the class that all the girls had a crush on, but no. It was boring old me, and I was a celebrity for 10 minutes.

Not sure where I'm going with this. I guess I'll just conclude it with some wisdom:


Life is to short to hoard your good erasers.