It had to happen I suppose. Now that science, industry and manufactured components have evolved far enough to create the multitude of contact lens types there are available today – someone just had to take all this advancement, and make it take the mickey! Novelty contact lenses are here to stay, a whole range of different styles and effects where you can change your appearance so easily and no one would ever know. Well, so long as you didn’t use something way out and wacky like cats eyes or red swirls!
I always remember making a fool of myself years ago – I reckon it must have been about 16 years ago now – but it’s still painfully embarrassing. I was working as a sales guy out on the road. I worked for a company called USD – United SOftware Distribution. it was a small company where the MD was also the owner. The purpose of the company was to promote and sell new computer games as they were released each and every month on behalf of the publishers.
It was a fairly new niche market (we’re talking the days of the SEGA Megadrive and the Amiga 500 v Atari ST battle for supremacy!) and our services were in demand.
One of the publishing houses who hired USD was called Sierra Online – they weren’t actually Online as we recognize it today – 1st person perspective shoot em ups were still awaiting the release of ‘Doom’ at this point!
Sierra Online was staffed predominantly with girls. I reckon the bosses worked out computer games didn’t really interest girls so if they were hired, more work would be done than if the staff was more male orientated. I didn’t care – I loved calling on them. I even remember having a huge crush for the boss there – Annie!
However, I got on well with everyone there and would always enjoy a coffee and a chat with them all. On one particular visit, one of the girls in the office downstairs caught my eye. I had never really noticed her much before because she was a fairly new starter and I’d always been tied up with Annie.
She was a lovely girl – friendly and bright with a dry sense of hour. But what really took me about her, really made an impression on me was her eyes. She had the most amazing lilac colored eyes you’ve ever seen, they were mesmerizing. I remember saying to her how amazing they looked and how gorgeous a shade of lilac they were. I couldn’t stop looking at them and had to apologize profusely whilst carrying on looking.
She obviously took pity on me and said nothing – because it was only about two years ago that I suddenly had the breakthrough moment where my brain caught up with the rest of me and managed to get a bit of control. Well, enough control for long enough to let me know that they had been fake, false, novelty lenses. They were not her eyes, her real eyes.
To say I was gutted would be an understatement. So understate that and then add incredibly embarrassed for being quite so dim, slow and not with it.