The Conundrum of the Flying Contact Lens

 It has been a strenuous week and rife with irony which in good faith could be construed as levity.  Firstly my musician friend acquired a second Hammond organ.  While I knew he had purchased some Hammond oil to lubricate the tone generator (which is similar to sewing machine oil),  he asked me to bring some over.  I had a little jar of this oil which got transferred out of its original white plastic bottle.  Even with its conical squirt top, to get to the oiling cups of a Hammond tone generator you must use an eye dropper or extension tube.  I remembered I had discovered several vessels of sewing machine oil while cleaning out my mother's room.  Now was the time to consolidate.  One was a tin of Singer oil, green and golden, covered in sludge.  The other was a white hard plastic small bottle that apparently had not been opened.  I had to snip off the tip of the squirt nozzle.  Squeezing the metal tin was not a problem, and it only took a minute or so to empty its contents into my little jar.  As I began to squeeze the rigid white bottle to get oil to come out, in a matter of a few seconds it decided otherwise.  My workbench, my hands, and my face became covered in oil as the bottle exploded.  Luckily I closed my eyes in time, but oil did get onto my contact lenses, and they proceeded to fog up.  This was the only casualty, but I did have to take one out and clean it.  Cleaning and inserting gas permeable hard contact lenses can be a challenge.  Since the Covid outbreak and a two year stint of infected eyes because of these said contact lenses, now I soak them in a diluted bleach solution as suggested by my ophthalmologist at Duke University, now retired Dr. Petrowski.  I only saw him a few times, but he was the most forthright and helpful eye doctor ever I have had.  Soaking the contacts overnight in this diluted solution kills the bacteria, fugus, or viruses, but also it removes the color tint from the lenses making them transparent.  The reason why they tint the lenses is for ease of use.  Having them clear makes cleaning and inserting them more difficult, and I have to be careful not to lose one.  It is the luck of the draw.  Usually one will fall off the tip of my index finger and land in the sink which is closed and full of water.  It only takes a few minutes to find the lens, although it likes to hide suctioned to the wall of the sink or the metal drain.  After receiving a text saying this Apple Macbook Pro was ready for pick up, I was putting in my contacts.  As the first contact balanced on the tip of my index finger, and it was filled with conditioning solution, suddenly the weight of the fluid (which evidently was too much) caused the contact to fall backward off the cliff of my finger.  My hand is raised in the air in front of the mirror like a doctor beginning to don a surgical glove.  Almost always the lens falls straight down into the sink, and I can either hear or see it.  This time the lens disappeared into thin air.  The games began, and they were Olympian.  Thirty minutes later no lens.  As I have learned in the past you need to be able to see to find a contact lens, and this is contradictory.  You have yet to put them in your eyes.  I have learned to put in my one spare to aid the searching process.  This I did, and the stored lens was caked in dried solution.  I cleaned it carefully trying not to disturb the sink full of water.  I spent an hour with a flashlight scouring the sink top, each bottle, the wall, the floor and the mirror.  There was no lens.  I decided to defer the search to a later date knowing that the lens could not have vanished into thin air.  It was not until hours later after Hooters chicken wings unpleasantly carved a tunnel through my intestines and into my rectum creating the quintessential ass fire, I told myself, "What is the one place you have not looked?"  The answer?  The toothbrush holder on the wall made of ceramic with six cutouts for such utensils. Could it be possible this small plastic lens could have teleported itself a foot and a half through the air full of liquid to this location?  It was the only place I had not looked.  It was on!  I looked, and there I saw the glimmer of a reflective piece of plastic lodged quietly and comfortably in the right second hole.  I fetched a Q tip swab and gently lifted it out.  I'm saved!!!