The Pinkest Eye

Last Thursday was a long day.  I was getting railed by my Spanish class, and I occasionally lost vision in my right eye.  Y’know, a typical Thursday.

On top of everything, “The Office” was a rerun!  (And it wasn’t even good enough of an episode for me to want to see it twice.)

You see, Thursdays are my typical social night, when my friends come over to watch TV, consume beverages, and see what other mayhem we can get ourselves into (which generally consists of breaking something in my apartment).  During this week’s process, I became worried about the loss of 50% of my eyesight and did what any well-educated college student would do—I flicked my eyelid repeatedly, using a method that I had learned from “fixing” poorly-wired headphones.

I flicked and rubbed at my eye and began to pick out large specks of crust until silently excusing myself from the festivities, where I checked my face in the bathroom mirror.  Not only was my eye inflamed and pink, but my lashes were coated with a gooey yellow syrup that I was certain no one would find attractive.

I had the virus.

The world seems to have a problem with pink eye.  A real problem.  And while my biggest beef has to do with the name—really, “pink eye”?  Are you coming down with a case of “pansy nose,” too?”—society has decided it pertinent to make people suffering from pink eye feel as ostracized as possible.

It sucks big time because I don’t own a pair of sunglasses, so my eye acts like a scarlet letter on my face (“I”), notifying everyone around me that I have been infected… and I am contagious as hell.

Conjunctivitis is one of the worst infections to have, because no one ever has any pity for you.  Obviously, the symptoms themselves are not pity-worthy (a slight itching sensation and a bloodshot eye spewing tablespoon after tablespoon of sludge), but people get downright frustrated when a pink eye sufferer comes near.  At least with cancer, people get sympathy (sometimes even empathy), but with pink eye, you get treated like a leper, or even a communist.  Every person you encounter interrogates you from a considerable distance: “Are you, or have you ever, touched any of my things with your bare hands?”

It’s an ocular infection, people; not exactly the red scare you should be worried about.

My biggest problem was my work schedule required me to go into the store the next day after self-diagnosing my ailment.  While I didn’t want to spread my bacteria to the entire GVSU campus, I also felt hesitant about calling my boss in the morning to tell him that I couldn’t stock today because my eye was a tad itchy.  All I wanted to do was fly away to somewhere where no one would judge me, but I was worried that taking the red eye anywhere at this point was too ironic.

I did my duties with my gaze cast at the floor the entire time, which likely gave off the impression that I had been crying all morning, rather than picking out eyeball grit with my fingernails.

It suddenly hit me today that it has almost been an entire week that I’ve been consistently denying that I’ve been smoking pot or that I haven’t been getting a decent amount of sleep.  These are ridiculous accusations, as I have been sleeping like a (stoned) baby.

So even though my conjunctiva are still shot with blood and I still have yet to look anyone in the eye through fear of infecting them via my sense of sight, I keep my spirits up.  Because now, all of my friends have pink eye, as well.  We have a lot to talk about.