Sunday, June 01, 2008

Peripheral Vision

Allergy season is in. Year after year, the same story. My eyes get itchy and my nose and ears get totally clogged. Nothing seems to work. I was so bored with it, that at this point, I would try anything. It is so noticeable, that last week when I was walking along a small street in Chinatown, looking for a dumplings place I've heard about, an old chinese man stopped me and asked me:
"you want allergy out?'
I asked him what he meant by that, to which he just replied:
"I give you allergy out"
At this point, I was willing to try anything. So I said yes to the old man. He went back into his rundown store and came back out with a small bottle.
"Put one drop in ears, one drop in nose. Close nose and blow. You be happy"
I took the bottle and asked him how much but he refused to receive any money.
That night when I got home, I got undressed and the bottle fell off my pants' pocket. I had totally forgotten about it. I was a bit skeptical, but decided to try it. I applied a drop in each one of my nostrils and a drop in my ears, covered my nose with two fingers and blew.
And then it happened...
My eyes were closed, as they always are when you blow your nose. Before I could open them again, I felt a strange sensation inside of my head. A warm tingling. It felt as if my eyes were rolling back into my head. Suddenly my ears popped, they were no longer clogged. I opened my eyes but what I saw disoriented me: I no longer saw the cabinet mirror in front of me. I was looking at the shower and the toilet, which were at opposite ends of the long bathroom.
I slowly turned my head around and saw myself in the mirror: I could see the right side of my head, my right ear, and in it, my right eye peeking out of the tiny ear hole. I turned the other way and saw exactly the same on the opposite side. My eyeballs had rolled all the way back to my ear canal.
I still could see perfectly. It took me a couple of minutes to get used to this, but I could see perfectly. I had a bit of a problem with perspective, but other than that, it was fine. I tried covering my nose again and this time instead of blowing I sucked the air in. I felt the same tingling sensation and my eyes rolled back to their original place.
I was happy. Not only my allergies were gone, but I had also learned to control my peripheral vision like nobody else.

...And then I sneezed.

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