The one in which Rachel's eyes let her down

My eyes carry a heavy burden. And I’m not referring to the weight of the glass suspended between my pair of outdated frames.

No. In my family, poor vision is regarded as a competitive sport. And we can be ruthless.

Prescriptions are meticulously discussed (blue eyes winning out over brown due to their enhanced sensitivity to light). Epic narratives of contact lenses lost to sinks, tubs and…toilets, reach legendary proportions. Unspoken rites that involve reusing the same pair of contacts/glasses for supernatural stretches of time become de rigeuer. And no one blinks an eye.

We are a clan of lumbering, half-blind Browns. But we are proud of it. And we have my Dad to thank.

I remember the time my Dad ran the “Sound to Narrows Run” in Tacoma, Washington. This 12k run winds the runner up and down Tacoma’s hilly streets and plunges him into Point Defiance’s Jurassic Park-like foliage. This run causes your calves to scream.

The roller-coaster terrain didn’t do my Dad in. Oh no. It was the eyes. Somewhere around the 4k mark, one of his contact lenses popped out onto the gravel course. Just like that. But the man remained unfazed.

Ever aware of the clock, he paused to scoop up the missing contact and then proceeded to spit into the palm of his hand to wipe off any gravel specs. He then plunked it back into place. In his eye. It was a “Jesus giving sight to the blind by rubbing spit and mud in the eye” moment. Only do-it-yourself style.

That’s my childhood legacy. Stories like those. Retellings of my Dad duct taping his frames back together (thus, was the utilitarian Brown spirit). And you thought this was something that only existed within the teen comedy genre. For the Brown children, it was reality.

And continues to be. When one of my contact lenses flared up on a trip to Amsterdam this past summer, I did what any good Brown child knows to do. I removed the offending contact and placed it in a trusty spot: in this case, my Dad’s water bottle. My rationale? The water would keep the contact sufficiently hydrated within an enclosed container. I then gave the water bottle back to my Dad with clear instructions to “not drink from it.”

I was tempting fate. Back at the hostel that evening, I soon realized that my Dad had, indeed, “drunk from it." Half of the water was gone.

As I stared in disbelief, my ever practical mother suggested we inspect the bottle for the rare possibility that the contact had managed to survive my Dad’s gulps. Survived it had. And in hydrated form too. Less than a minute later it was back in my eye – now positively refreshed.

What can I say? I’m shameless.

It wasn’t until this past week that I realized how far of a goner I was. When my right eye sprouted a scramble of inflamed red veins, I did nothing. I simply removed the offending contact lens to soak it and went about my day – with only one good eye. I did this for 3 days: only occasionally bumping into protruding edges and corners.

My roommate advised me to throw it out. "What? And waste a perfectly good contact"? Had all my father's lessons been in vain?

Not quite. I did remove the musty contact and replace it with a new one. But I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Not yet. So there it sits among a jumble of shower products. Awaiting the day I muster the courage to pop it back in – should I be in a pinch.

That, or the day my Dad somehow manages to accidentally swallow it.