Went for an eye test last weekend, mostly because we were sent a £10 voucher through the mail and I’ve never had one. Everyone else in the family has glasses and they seem mystified that I don’t. “We all wear them, bet you need a pair, get your eyes tested and find out”.

So I did, they’re fine. Well, the right one is a bit oval, but only a bit. The only thing the optician said was that my eyes are very dry and that I should use eye drops. Squirting those in my eyes is a new form of torture I’ve discovered. They don’t hurt, I don’t dislike it, but the reflex to shut my eye when they see objects moving towards them takes a lot to override. This is a reflex that can detect pieces of Dremel cutoff wheel flying at my face and deal with it before I’ve even noticed the blade has snapped. A droplet of water must be comically slow by comparison.

The eye test itself was kind of interesting, I had a 3D scan of my eyes done too which involved looking into a machine that scanned a red line up and down each eye. Then there was the other machine with the balloon in it that did some focus testing and then blew fucking air at my eyeball from a point blank range. “Oh this might make you jump a bit but it doesn’t hurt” the nice lady said as something started extending towards my eyeball. “We use air to test the pressure of your eye”. Aha, well after having it done multiple times I think my eyes are fine, they’ve not popped.

The actual optician (optometrist? which one is it?) also had a good peer around inside my eyes using the brightest light I’ve ever seen. You think the sun is bright? Go get an eye test. “Put your chin on here, look at my left ear, this is going to be a bit bright”. No shit. At one point he was fiddling round with a microscope having a really good look at the back of my eyeball and everything lined up perfectly so that I could see a perfect image of my own retina. I’m sure nature never intended on the light sensing part of an eye to see itself.

We also had the traditional reading of the letters game, and some fun with different lenses being stuck in front of my eyes. “Tell me which number looks clearest… number one… number two?”. After a while I just got confused as successive lenses looked identical… “Number four… or number two?” … “err? I can’t tell? Same? is that a valid answer?”. “Ok, when I do this does your vision get worse or better?” “Nope, worse, it’s all blurry”… “Hmm, and this way is clearer” “Yep”.

I guess I must have been consistently confused to get a reading of zero for both eyes. I am quite sure the way this is done removes any bias I might have towards glasses or not. Like when immigration asks you the same question six different ways just to check you’re not lying.

For all the science behind distance sight testing, close up testing seems to involve being given a sheet of paper with writing on and being asked to read the tiniest text on it. “Can you read the smallest text on this page OK?” … “Yep, looks fine”.

So yeah, eye drops and “come back in two years, you might need some then” was the verdict.