I Left My Lens in San Francisco

The more time that goes by, the more I don't believe this actually happened to me two Fridays ago, but it did.

The most bizarre thing.

I was stopping by my local Walgreens after work to pick up some prescriptions and right as I passed by the face creams and hot wax aisle, I was fiddling with my left contact lens and--poof--I lost contact with my contact.

It just fell, into seeming nothingness. I didn't even hear it hit the ground.

And then ensued the humiliating and frantic search in which I crawled on the ground, groping like a blindman, patted myself down and felt myself up repeatedly, and ran into some coworkers who were buying Nair.

And finally, thirty minutes older, defeated and perplexed, I left Walgreens with a heavy heart and one contact lens lighter. I give up!!! (And I really mean it this time!)

I rode the BART home and bemoaned the seemingly arbitrary meaninglessness of God's ways to my longsuffering spouse.

While I was still moping around, licking my existential wounds, said spouse came bounding up the stairs with a small transparent object perched on his index finger. "Is this your contact lens?" he asked with innocence.

"WHAT? WHERE DID YOU FIND IT?! WHAT?!"

He said he found it on the staircase, right in the spotlight created by the overhead track light.

As I tried on the long lost contact lens, the one I had given up for dead, I blubbered about the impossibility of it all...but I rode BART...but I patted and frisked myself silly in the store...but I turned all my pockets upside down and shook out my loafers...but, but, but...that's impossible!

How did my little lens survive all that jostling, the walk to the underground train, the car ride home, and finally, to land in that most perfect of places (despite all the foot traffic)--right. under. the spotlight.

When I was younger I read an account by Elizabeth Elliot about an even more fantastic contact lens redemption. Some woman had gone rock climbing and at the top of a sheer cliff she lost a contact lens. But when she had made her descent, she saw the most amazing thing at the foot of the mountain:

An ant was carrying her contact lens towards her.

All these years I dismissed Ms. Elliot's account as hyperbole...but now...maybe I see things more clearly...?