My Burning Eyeballs.

Anyone who has ever spent any amount of time with me is aware of the
bizarre, never-ending battle I fight with my contact lenses. Trials
caused by these little bits of film often occur at the most
inopportune times, such as the other day, for example, as I drove home
on one of the city's busiest streets.

It was a lovely, crisp afternoon, and I had rolled down the windows of
my gleaming black Jetta as I drove through the afternoon college
traffic of Tennessee Street with an arm hanging lazily out the window.
The sun was shining; the birds were singing, or at least, I assume
they were, although really I have no way of knowing, since the cars
pouring onto the street filled with raucous young people blasting
every tune imaginable created an unbelievable din that drowned out all
but the immediate noises within my own vehicle, which on that
particular day happened to be Rufus Wainwright's dulcet tones crooning
out of my speakers as only Rufus Wainwright's dulcet tones can.

I remember smiling smugly to myself that afternoon, thinking about the
magnificent parking spot I had managed to find, how I had gotten out
of class early, and now was able to head home, the promise of a
steaming cup of tea propelling me onward. How happy I was then, how
naïve! Little did I know of the tribulation which lay just ahead!

Oh, Eyeballs! If only I had remembered your sensitivity to small
particles! If only you had done your job -- your simple, only job! --
and taken note of the cloud of dust swirling in the air, stirred from
its lowly gravel bed by the traffic speeding carelessly by! If only I
had been able to close the window fast enough!

The Pain, my God! The Pain!

Both hands instinctively flew off the steering wheel and clapped over
my burning eyeballs. Luckily, the stupidity of this action registered
quickly in my brain, and I managed to pry open one bleary eyelid
enough to make out the cars in front of me. Tears poured out of my
eyes as I squinted at my side-view mirrors, trying to find a way to
switch lanes so that I could pull over. Of course this would be the
one day I had chosen to be in the middle of three lanes during rush
hour traffic, and of course none of these fraternity gentlemen in
their over-sized SUVs and trucks were willing to permit a tiny little
girl in a tiny little Volkswagen with a tiny little "Independents Do It
Without Chains: Enjoy Your Locally-Owned Coffee House!" bumper sticker
to pass them.

PLEASE. I silently begged a monstrous Chevy to let me in. The
driver merely pulled his Yankees baseball cap further over his eyes,
shielding me from his view, and sped up, just as the Explorer behind
him and the F-150 behind that followed suit. I looked to my left. The
other lane was worse.

By this point, eye makeup was flowing down my face in a sort of
deluge. Incidentally, to add to my attractiveness, I will have you
know that whenever my eyes tear up, my nose tends to run also. Snot
and tears and black, black, black mascara were streaming down my
cheeks, which did nothing to detract from the fact that my eyeballs
were still stinging as though ten-thousand tiny bees had somehow
lodged themselves behind my pupils.

I realized, then, that there was no hope of switching lanes at any
time in the near future, or at least until the right lane fell away to
join another main road, but by that time, I would already be seconds
from my house.

There's no point in pulling over, I told myself. Be a big
girl and think of something else. You're almost home.

You're right. I thought. And I was.

Oh, reader! I really did try! I thought about politics. I thought
about Russian literature. I thought about that cup of tea and I
thought about Nathan Thomas Klose @ (706) 495-9120 -- and that's
my real phone number, who stole my heart one sentence at a
time on Über.com.

It was all to no avail. Nothing could stop the tiny flecks of dust
burning my eyeballs out of their sockets, and to worsen the matter, my
non-waterproof mascara was now running so badly that my vision was
almost completely black. Black, I say! Blacker than your heart!

Resolutely, I did the only think that seemed to make sense at the
time. I grasped the steering wheel firmly in both hands, and I threw
both eyes open as wide as they could possibly go,

And I screamed.

I screamed and screamed and screamed like a little girl in a B-Grade
horror movie. You cannot possibly begin to fathom the depth of my
agony, or the pitch of my shrieks as I continued to drive. I imagine I
was quite a sight: aforementioned liquids still running down my face,
hands gripping the steering wheel for dear life, eyes wide open and
eyebrows raised, and best of all, still -- oh yes, still -- screaming
and screaming, all the way home.