Chrissie Graham - The Contact Lens

 

Like most of you, I'm guessing, I was a total dork as a kid. I mean, for Halloween, I was Mozart. [audience laughter] It was that bad, I'm not kidding. To boot, I had terrible, terrible, terrible vision. I had these thick coat bottle glasses. It was just painful. I was just steeped in dorkdom, and I wanted so badly to get out. I wanted to be cool more than anything. And my mom, my mom saw this and bless her heart in the most amazing act of loving kindness. She got me contact lenses. [audience chuckles] And not soft lenses, hard gas permeable lenses. And if you guys have ever had this, you know what it's like. It's like the texture of an M&M shell, and it's about that resilient. [audience chuckles] 

 

And so, this was an amazing, amazing act of faith to give these lenses to an 11-year-old kid, okay? And so, very wisely she sat me down and she said, “Chrissie, these lenses cost $50 each. And if you break one or if you lose one, you're going to have to pay to have it replaced.” And I was like, “$50?” [audience chuckles] I was like, “I don't know how much that is, but I know it's a lot. It’s a lot of money.” Because I didn't really get money at 11. But I loved these lenses so much. I love them, because they freed me up to not be a total, total dork. And it was great. 

 

Six months after this conversation, I was taking the bus home. It was the city bus, not the school bus, mind you, because now I was cool, because I had my contacts, and I had a perm, and I had the over the shoulder esprit bag. [audience laughter] So, I get off the bus, and the bus drives away. As it does, it spews all this grime into the air, and it gets in my eye. If any of you have ever experienced having stuff in your eye with a hard contact lens, it is excruciating. You can't think, you can't walk, you can't talk. You can't do anything except for pop that lens out of your eye. Which is exactly what I did. And in that moment, gust of wind, [audience aw] and my beloved contact lens, it was gone. Just gone. [audience chuckles] 

 

And that was a long, long. long walk home. Because not only was I missing my lens, but I thought, how am I going to tell my mom? She is going to be devastated. Devastated that I lost this lens, and I let her down only six months after she trusted me. And I thought, okay, I don't know how to do this. So, I'm going to wait until dinner, and I'm going to think about how I'm going to break the news to her. So, dinner time came, and I still didn't know. I didn't know how to do this. So, I thought, well, I'll sleep on it, and I'll come up with a good idea in the morning. I woke up, nothing. I thought, okay, I can only see out of one eye, I can probably make it through the day, and I'll think about [chuckles] what I'm going to say by the time I come home. Still nothing. This went on for four years. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

And the only thing that made me say something was that I was about to turn 16 and get my driver's license. And I needed to see. [audience laughter] So, I couldn't tell my mom the truth at this point. So, I made up some story that I was like at Christian River raft camp or something and got washed out. God reached up with His watery hand [audience laughter] and plucked it out of my eye, and it was meant to be. Her response was, “Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry. We'll get you a new one.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Seriously? Had I known this four years earlier. Anyhow.” [audience chuckles] When I finally, finally got up the courage to tell her what really had happened, I was 33. [audience laughter] And her response was just bewilderment [audience chuckles] that I could ever doubt her unconditional love for me. Thank you.