#53 Eye Just May Be Crazy
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What a week. Between Imus and Anna Nicole, I didn’t know what to think about our media and society in general. But then, when a genuine American hero passed away in the middle of the week, Kurt Vonnegut, and the media gave him about one tenth of one tenth of one percent of the attention they afforded the aforementioned scandals, I finally remembered that it’s not the media and our society that’s out of whack; it must be me, and so yet again, I had to laugh at myself, and realize that I am indeed a stranger in a strange land, and the sooner I embrace my situation, the sooner the insomnia and anxiety will go away. So it goes.
I got a lot of surprised looks from friends and acquaintances this week because I had to wear my glasses out in public for the first time in years. This is because I have decided to undergo laser eye surgery, and one of the requirements for said surgery is to not wear contact lenses for two weeks before the surgery. When I explained why I was wearing glasses, people seemed even more surprised, because I don’t seem like a likely person to spend the three thousand dollars it entails to have eye surgery. After all, I commonly blaspheme insurance, doctors, health care, and medicine in general. Furthermore, I only work about 32 hours a week as a Restaurant Manager, Cook, and Barista.
I’m also traveling to Japan for eleven days this summer, and that’s going to cost me a pretty penny. So a lot of people have asked me this week how I’m going to afford all of this. Well, while I am very good at saving money, in order to finance this trip and the eye surgery without going slightly into debt, I’ve decided to borrow money from my parents, interest free. This is a big step for me, because it changes the entire plotline for the as of yet unwritten biography of self-made trillion-are, Mike Oppenheim. Now the title has to have an asterisk, which explains that at the age of twenty-five, Mike borrowed two thousand dollars from his parents, interest free.
But I’d like to point out that were I to actually close my savings account with TD Ameritrade and take out the money that I’ve already saved, then I could afford the trip, the eye surgery, and a brand new HD TV, but I’d rather keep my portfolio, and borrow from my parents, in the hope that my portfolio will net enough interest to pay my parents back within a years time. But most people my own age still don’t understand how I could have saved that much money, working as little as I do. They also wonder why when I did save up all of that cash, I put it into an investment account, instead of blowing it on some sweet trip to Thailand or Vegas. Allow me to use one brief paragraph to explain just how easy it is to save money when you make less than thirty thousand dollars a year.
The short answer is…Wal-Mart. As in, if you want to save money, do your shopping at places like Wal-Mart, not Saks Fifth Avenue. If you need food, go to the local Safeway, not Whole Foods, and if you need a car to get around, buy a Honda, not a BMW. Want to live alone? Get a nice apartment in a bad neighborhood, or a bad apartment in a nice neighborhood, but don’t try to live a life that is beyond your means. Little decisions like these add up to bigger savings, and that’s how I’m going to repay my parents the loan they’ve given me for my trip to Japan and laser eye surgery. And the best part of all of this is that I’m going to see Japan with 20/20 vision!
That is, of course, if my so-called irrational fear of the week doesn’t come to fruition. And this of course is my “irrational fear that I will become the first human being, ever, in the history of this world, to go blind from Laser Eye Surgery.” So far, the Lasik™ system has been in use for over ten years, and after 60,000 operations, not a single person has gone blind. So, obviously, I’m going to be the very first victim of this surgery!
And as if my own irrational fears are not stressing me out enough, my own mother is using my eye surgery as an attempt to control my decision making process from several states away from my current locale. My mother’s latest scheme, you ask? Somehow, she’s convinced that ‘one should not smoke pot the week before or after having laser eye surgery.’ Now I’m no doctor, but I’m sure my mother has made this fact up. But I don’t want to call you a liar, Mom, so I’m going to assume that your research on ‘smoking pot in relation to Lasik™ eye surgery’ came from a highly encrypted, password based website that only empty nested mother’s can access, which must be found at: www.paranoid-research-designed-to-scare-your-child-into-following-your-will-even-though-they’re-too-old-to-listen-to-their-mothers-anymore.com.
This is the same website, for the record, that tells you that because someone in your family has declared themselves an alcoholic in the past, you will become one as well if you ever drink more than the occasional glass of red wine on special holidays. It’s also the same website that explains how if you forget to send your mother a Valentine’s Day, Birthday, or Mother’s Day card, her heart will break from the stress and she’ll die many years younger than ‘she was supposed to’, all because of your neglect.
And speaking of the ‘occasional glass of red wine,’ the optometrist at the laser eye surgery office concurred with my theory of my ‘dry eyes problem’ and agrees that drinking an entire bottle of red wine in one evening will probably lead to a bad case of dry eyes the next morning. And this is precisely why I don’t regularly visit doctors; they usually confirm what I’ve already intuited, so it’s a waste of my time and money.
But back to my Mom’s great research, the only problem with her report on marijuana and eye surgery is that I really don’t smoke a lot of pot, so her concern is misplaced. If you really want to be concerned about something, Mom, how about the fact that you never taught me anything about the proper names of plants, animals or foods? I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; I look like an idiot when I point at a food or animal and then ask people what they are called. When this happens, which is quite often, I feel really stupid, because the person I’ve asked to identify the given object will usually say “That’s an apple, Mike,” while giving me the same look that people give someone with downs syndrome who just wet themselves and is asking for a bathroom.
But seriously, my Mom trying to talk me out of smoking pot for the surgery was all fun and games to me, until after the first night I’d decided to have the surgery. That evening, I smoked a little grass in order to positively enhance my experience of watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, but when the shows were over, and I attempted to fall asleep, I found myself curling up into a ball of pure adrenaline infused mental anxiety and fear because what had formerly been a fear of possibly going blind, had suddenly turned into an impending date with permanent blindness. And before you laugh at me, have you ever really stopped to think about how hard it is to be blind?
Forget about my recent ankle injury and my sudden compassion and empathy for the crippled, my latest bandwagon is ‘team blind.’ Being blind is going to be extremely hard for me to adjust to. When you are blind, you can’t cook for yourself, and I imagine that even bathing and urinating require mounds of attention and practice. Furthermore, I love my eyes, because I love to read and write, I like to bask in the sunshine, I enjoy watching movies, and most importantly, I believe that when I see a beautiful woman, it helps to raise my heart level to a healthy rate that simulates the actual act of exercising, which is good for my overall health – so going blind will be annoying, stressful, hard to deal with, but worst of all, it will actually be bad for my physical health and longevity.
But I’m biting the bullet, taking a chance, and I’m going to go ahead and pray to all the gods out there that this surgery will be quick, painless, and an utter success. Why am I taking such a voluminous risk? Well, it’s because the doctor told me that I’m in the ‘perfect candidacy bracket’ for this surgery, and he’s 98 percent sure I’ll come out with at least 20/20 vision, but he’s very hopeful that I’m actually going to come out with better than 20/20 vision – which basically means that I’m paying to become a superhero, which is cool, and just fine by me! If only he could throw in the powers of osmosis, telepathy, and ‘getting girls to like me regardless of my flawed personality,’ then this would be the perfect operation for me! Besides the surgery is less risky than driving a car…“so be it.”
So Mom, you can relax, because right now, I’m far too paranoid about never seeing again to smoke marijuana, which means ‘your baby’ will be ‘drug free’ for most of the next two weeks. (Although I think that I can still get high as long as it’s still light out and I can see well, and I’m around friends that I know and trust who can talk me out of a panic attack if one comes on.) But really, I’m so scared of this surgery that I don’t think I’ll be smoking any paranoia, I mean pot, until the doctor assures me that it was a success.
And speaking of smoking, for those of you keeping score, today marks day one of week three of my official campaign to quit smoking cigarettes forever. I have to admit that I actually feel healthier now that I’m over the two-week hump, but I also have to admit that I still crave cigarettes a lot of the time, and there are moments where I would trade anything for a smoke. But in these moments, I continue to convince myself not to give in to the craving, and I’m proud of myself when I later reflect on my decision to actually exercise my own will power. But I’m not going to lie, if my surgery goes awry, and I end up blind, I’ve decided that my consolation prize for trading in my decent eye sight for no eyesight is that I will resume smoking cigarettes, only this time, I’ll chain smoke them.
This thought process only serves to prove the fact that cigarettes are so addictive that I would actually trade in my own eyesight for a cigarette – but notice that I wouldn’t say the same thing about pot, and that’s because unlike alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine, marijuana is not addictive, and it’s therefore a pretty safe ‘drug,’ if you want to label it as such. And you can find out more about my opinions on marijuana from my website: www.mikeyopp.com/spec20.html. Or you could log onto that “Mother’s Only” website and research how this article crossed some sort of line for my mother, and while you’re there, I’m sure you can also find out when you need to write someone a thank you note.
