The Case of Red Eyes.
The image above has nothing at all to do with this story. Before you get freaked out by the title, this has nothing to do with the actual optical disease. For a long time had puffy or ‘reddish’ eyes. Even back in boarding school, after a nap or a boring lesson — a dozed through most of those — colleagues would point out how my eyes were puffy.
So growing up I got used to the constant remarks but at home, people rarely noticed and when they did, they attributed it to genes and often pointed out a few relatives that had a similar condition.
In high school after compliments from a few girls how I had cute eyes but they looked ‘weird’ during afternoon classes — I said I dozed through most of those. I convinced my dad that I needed to see the optician just to be sure it wasn’t a symptom of a disease.
The hospital visit came with new eye glasses and a week’s long eye drops and caution to avoid dust and too much wind. Back at school I had the perfect medical excuse to exclude myself from the classroom sweeping rooster.
What the doctor didn’t mention was that adding eye drops to a lovely cute pair of eyes at midday would turn them to scary red eyes and that was killing my vibe with the girls. After three or four applications, the eye drops were ditched for causing counter effects.
The highlight of this condition came a few years back. I was at my lowest moment in life. I had finished school, had looked for jobs in vain. My parents had then collected some money and offered it to me as capital to start a business.
After trying to invest in everything I could possibly do, I still failed at that too. So here I was two months at my parents place,penniless and beyond broke. All I ever did was sleep and eat all day, every day. I did nothing because I had tried everything I could and had resigned my life to just sleeping.
It goes without saying that I didn’t have any friends then. No one wants any broke buddies. The only social gatherings I had actually attended in the last months were the occasional church services apart from that; I highly doubt I ever interacted with anyone during that time.
Being staunch born-again Christians, my parents often pestered a pastor to come by and ‘pray for us.’ On this fateful day she accepted to come, my dad called from work to tell me to get ready we were having visitors. Given my mood those days, I grunted, turned over and continued with my slumber.
The pastor was believed to be a prophet too. So when she arrived with her entourage that included my dad, I was dragged out of bed to the sitting room. After the pleasantries and a few songs she ‘started.’ So when it came to me she said I needed to ditch all my friends for they were bad company.
She asked whether I smoked and I replied in the negative. She went ahead to examine my hands while she scrutinized me like a CT scan from head to toe. In conclusion she said my associates smoked weed and I needed to distance myself from them.
While she said all that, my dad would echo every word she said and would often interject with a ‘Have you heard?’ Not only was I baffled but I found everything laughable. But I had to ‘behave in front of visitors’ so I kept a straight face.
Over dinner with my parents later that day I said to them, “You guys have been smoking weed behind my back. How pitiful!” “You guys have been my only ‘associates’ for the last couple of months and I need to distance myself from you.”
We all laughed about it over the meal and concluded that she probably had seen my puffy eyes since I had been sleeping and concluded I either smoked or had weed smoking friends.
