Is that a stye in your eye or are you flirting with me?

by Andrea Mulder-Slater

It all began several mornings ago.

Geoff (hopeful): “Are you winking at me?”

Me (indignant): “I’m not winking at you. I just woke up. I’m half asleep.”

Geoff (disappointed): “You’re eye is completely shut. Don’t you feel that?”

I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My left eye looked tired, bag-ridden and wrinkled. Perfectly normal. However, my right eye - up to my eyebrow and down to my cheek - was far more swollen than usual. Like a grapefruit. Or a puffer fish.

My mind raced as I tried to determine why I looked like I had just lived through ten (okay two) rounds of a boxing match. Did I doze off on a wasp? Did I sleep-punch myself in the head? Really, anything was possible.

I have a tendency to worry  fret  freak-the-hell-out and so, I decided to calm my fears by self-diagnosing with the help of the Internets. Because, only good things can come from Googling symptoms at six o’clock in the morning. Am I right?

Bug bite. Allergic reaction. Stye. Flesh eating disease. Eyelid cancer... the possibilities were endless but one thing was certain. My meticulous research ultimately pointed to just one outcome. I was going to die later that afternoon.

After a brief (but effective) panic attack, I pulled myself together and focused on the facts. I didn’t have blepharitis because apparently that involves a lot of involuntary teardrops and the tears rolling down my cheeks were entirely deliberate. I also determined that didn’t have conjunctivitis because my eye was nowhere near the shade of my daughter’s Dora the Explorer chair.

Then, it became clear. I didn’t have pink eye… I had WINK eye.

My right eye had simply gone rogue and was on its way to developing a personality fully divided from the rest of my body. Yes, my eye was crossing over to the dark side. My eye was becoming a slut.

For the next few days, I wore dark glasses whenever I left the house, which was rarely. Remembering to keep the glasses on while out and about was problematic as my memory is for shit. All was fine until I went bare-eyed through the Tim Horton’s Drive-Thru, thus giving a sixteen-year-old boy the shock of his life.

Poor kid. One minute he’s dizzy with the joy of preparing iced cappuccinos for a gaggle of giggling tweens and the next, he’s staring at a woman with matronly arms who is winking suggestively while waiting for her double cream.

This is why I decided that - for the greater good -  I should stay home until my condition improved. Or at least until my 3 year old stopped saying, “Ew mommy, your eye looks really moofy.” 

Still waiting…

No, really.