There were two main warnings I heard when I got my first pair of contact lenses. One was not to fall asleep while wearing them when sunbathing, or else they would melt into my eyes. The other was that they were quite susceptible to falling out, often at inconvenient times. I was told of a hockey game in which one of the players complained of losing one. The game was stopped while the entire surface of the ice was searched.

Now, regarding the first, even though contacts become so crusty and uncomfortable when you fall asleep wearing them even when you're not sunbathing that their merely melting seems like sweet relief, I have heeded this warning.

But the second warning wasn't necessary; I didn't lose a contact lens for a long time.

I always expected to, even though none of my friends who wore contact lenses ever had one of theirs fall out. I would wake up in the morning, brush my teeth, have a nice shower, and put my contact lenses in, fully anticipating that that might be the day one would fall out. It never happened.

Since I started wearing them, there have been many technological breakthroughs in the field of contact lens design. My optician told me that I could keep my first pair in for sixteen hours at a time. I've been told to wear the ones I currently have for no more than twelve hours at once. Some pairs are more comfortable than others. My first pair felt great. I didn't even know when I was wearing them, except that I could see much better. But with one of my more recent pairs, my eyes were fraught with pain whenever I inserted them.

There was one pair that was so comfortable that I kept them for much longer than the recommended eighteen months. (I should mention that due to scientific advances in eyewear, the suggested life of my current pair is twelve months.) They were a delight to wear, until the plastic they were made of started to degrade, and get a bit too dry, and they started to hurt a little.

I was walking home from the bus stop when I decided to buy a bag of potato chips at a nearby convenience store. As it was just potato chips, I declined the convenient plastic bag the clerk offered me to carry it home in. But it was a fairly cold day and I was wearing a toque, which was slightly ill-fitting. When I awkwardly raised both my hands to adjust my toque, one of the corners of the bag of potato chips which I was carrying fell into my eye and popped out the contact lens.

My eye was fine. The contact lens landed on my cheek, so I didn't really lose it. But a wave of relief came over me, that a contact lens that I was wearing finally actually fell out. I felt just like a hockey player!

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