Ocular Fusion

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.
When it's cold outside I've got the month of May.
I guess you'll say,
What can make me feel this way?
Eyegal (Eyegal, Eyegal)
Talkin' 'bout Eyegal (Eyegal!)
Ooooh Hoooo.

With apologies to The Temptations, I'd like to do a little talkin' 'bout my Eyegal in honor of St. Valentine's Day.

I first spotted Eyegal sitting in the row in front of me in developmental psychology at Harding University in the Fall of 1982. Little did we know then what would develop from that little chance encounter. Although I didn't ask her out right away, we competed for who would get the highest scores on tests and quizzes (she almost beat me on a couple of occasions) and had lunch a few times at Heritage Cafeteria before she went off to spend a semester in Europe. Pretty romantic stuff, eh? Cupid would be proud.

But I had her in my mind's eye while she was gone and upon her return I beat off a few persistent but unsuitable suitors and finally worked up the nerve to ask her out for Homecoming. As I recall, she had a prior commitment (something about washing her hair) and turned me down cold. But I did receive a consolation prize--an invitation to the grandest social event of the season, the Sigma Phi Mu Fall Hayride scheduled for the very next week.

Although I never envisioned a romp in the hay on our first date, I figured that since it was a school-sanctioned event that it was probably ok. Lucky me, the temperature was in the 30s that night, so even though we didn't know each other that well yet, we were forced to snuggle a lot in order to avoid hypothermia and survive the evening (ok, stop the gagging out there). We went on to bigger and more extravagant dates, like dinner and a movie in Little Rock, and somewhere along the line I began to think that I might like to hang out with this eyegal for the rest of my life.

Guys in general can be pretty stupid, though, and this eyeguy was no exception. At some point during our early relationship I got the notion that I should probably look around a little more just to make sure that Eyegal was "the one." When I told her about my plan, she shot me one of those eye of the tiger looks of hers (they still work) and thankfully I started to see the light.

The Harding marriage hothouse worked its usual magic and Eyegal and I were fused on June 15th, 1985. Actually, I wasn't an official eyeguy at that point. First came eyeball school, so off we went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry where Eyegal patiently endured so many practice eye exams that she started chanting "which is better, one or two" in her sleep and quickly memorized the eyechart. After that, no matter how badly I messed up her refractions, she always read a perfect 20/20. Now that's amore!

She also picked up a good working knowledge of ocular anatomy and disease. To this day, whenever she picks up the phone and a friend with an eye problem is on the other end, she usually goes ahead and diagnoses the condition and suggests the appropriate therapy without even consulting me. It would be easy for me to be insulted by this, especially when I pick up the phone and they ask for Eyegal. But as much as I hate to admit it, most of the time she's right.

We've been married over 20 years now and looking back I must say the view is pretty good. I know Eyegal pretty well, but there's still a lot of mystery behind those blue eyes, enough to probably keep me busy trying to figure things out for at least twenty more. But hey, that's half the fun.

Eyegal, you probably know this, but just in case, let me tell you again--you're too good to be true and I can't take my eyes off of you. My eyes adored you then and adore you still, and I'll be watching you for as long as these old eyes of mine have light to see.