It started with the light flashes … whitish-blue streaks of lightning bolting through my right eye’s peripheral vision every time I blinked. “Huh, that’s peculiar,” I said to myself. This went on for several days recently, and like any man, I tried to ignore it, thinking it was some weird contact lens anomaly that would eventually resolve on its own. After all, when taking my contacts out at night the lightning seemed to disappear. No biggie, I thought.
As I was walking down a hallway outside my office at work, a GIGANTIC brown spider dropped from the ceiling right in front of me, dangling on its web six inches from my nose. What kind of monster was this? Startled, I clumsily stepped backward, screamed like a schoolgirl, and began waving my arms in front of my face to knock the enormous arachnid away. Strangely, I kept missing the thing. I was air boxing. The spider proved elusive even though it was hanging right in front of me. How did a spider this size get inside my building? And what did it want with me? I had done nothing to it! And why do I keep missing it and its web?
I swatted at it more, to no avail. “Get away!” I shouted. It didn’t care. My words didn’t threaten the menace.
Then, like CGI from a movie, the spider suddenly and mysteriously exploded into a dozen bees, all swarming my face, ready to plunge their stingers into my flesh. Was I in some sort of horror flick all of a sudden? Some kind of Freddy-Kruegerish-nightmare? Now I waved my arms more frantically as I ducked and lurched forward, searching for safety along the hallway wall. I may have yelped. No, I’m sure I yelped. Others in the hall undoubtedly took quiet note as they watched me pin my back against the wall and struggle against those bees, which tracked my every movement. No amount of swatting could drive them away. They were relentless, and they were out for blood. “Stop!” I pleaded with them.
But the bees disappeared as quickly as they came. Not entirely, though. They sort of hovered off to my right in a tight cluster. As I moved my eyes around, I noticed the bees moved with me. I reached out to try to touch them, and that’s when I realized there was nothing actually out in front of me. What I was seeing was going on behind the surface of my eye! I’d heard about floaters, but until then had never experienced one. And this wasn’t just one floater. It was an army of them! If you’ve seen A Bug’s Life, my right eye became cloudy like Hopper’s, the devious grasshopper leader.
I steadied myself and walked down the hallway to my destination marveling at all the new debris in my right eye, blinking feverishly to try to wash it away, rotating my head in circles thinking I could use gravity to clear my vision. Nothing helped. I even pounded the side of my head with my palm as if I was trying to release water from my ear. I was too distracted to bother with all the frozen, gaping-jawed people parting the hallway so I could pass, wondering if I was okay.
I made an emergency appointment with my eye doctor, who diagnosed my malady as posterior vitreous detachment, something common in people as they age. Thankfully, no retinal tear that required laser surgery. But what I loved hearing most from my eye doctor was something I have heard too frequently from all my doctors in the last five years: “You’re a little young for this to happen.” Apparently, I’m a real go-getter who likes to stay ahead of the curve. To honor this experience, I’ve named my largest floater Hopper.