I’m pretty close to legally blind. Without some sort of corrective lenses I’m helpless. Just ask my wife—trying to show me anything after I’ve popped my contacts out at the end of the day is an exercise in futility.
One comfort I take in my blindness is that I’m not alone. Millions of people, probably even billions, suffer from some kind of impaired eye-sight. And many, like me, choose to wear contacts to make life a little clearer.
Contacts are awesome. I still remember the first day I put down my coke-bottle glasses and popped them in. Eight grade. Glorious. In a moment I became a little less of a dork. Contacts were my new best friends.
But with my new-found friends came the daily routine of taking off my glasses, opening the case of contacts, putting the right one on my right finger, plopping a few drops of solution on it, shoving it in my eye, and doing the same with the left. At the end of the day too—simply in reverse.
And here I discovered that the makers of contacts and their cases and their cleaning solutions really know their audience.
See, for those of us with nearly useless eyes the world gets awfully simplified without our lenses. Definition and clarity are no longer words with meaning. Amorphous becomes reality. And the contact lens industry knows our plight.
Either they suffer the same or they’ve really done their homework or by some freak of trial and error they’ve stumbled on a small but brilliant design solution to our dilemma when we’re working without our lenses snug up against our eyeballs. They’ve discovered that colors bold and bright make a world of difference.
There’s a cleverly designed reason why one cap on my lenses case is teal and one is white. And the same is true for the bright red cap on my cleaning solution. I can clearly see these colors even without my contacts.
Now I know which lens is for my right eye and which is for my left. Now I know which bottle of solution is safe for my eye and which is meant for disinfecting my lenses.
So thank you contact lens dudes and dudettes, you makers of corrective lens paraphernalia. Thank you for caring and taking the time to know your audience. My day is a bit brighter and clearer with you on my side.
Image courtesy of Lee Haywood
