Writing Prompt: Irritation

Not my eye.

Last night my left eye was really bugging me.

I wear contacts.

In the past, I put them in at 5 a.m. and took them out about 11 p.m. each night to let my eyes breath. But a few months ago, my eye doctor suggested I try a particular brand which I could keep in for 30 days and then discard.

I wasn’t anxious to do so. I liked the idea of removing my contacts nightly and “resting” my eyes.

But I gave it a shot, and loved it. When I put the first contact in my eye it melted away like cotton candy. I didn’t even know it was there, other than the fact that I could see about a hundred times better.

My only (very tiny) quibble is that sometimes by the end of thirty days, the contacts get a teensy bit dry – unlike my former brand which dried up like shingles in my eyes by before bedtime.

So, when my left eye was still bugging me at the end of the day yesterday, I didn’t worry overmuch. I knew I had a new set of contacts on tap for this morning.

But when I got up and put the left one in, I felt not the bliss of cotton candy melting away, but the awful scratch of whatever.

Annoyed, but running late, I left them in and went to work, hoping that furious blinking would remove whatever offensive irritant was causing the problem.

No such luck, and here I sit with a (singular) painfully bloodshot eye, wearing my ultra cool red spectacles from at least three prescriptions ago. Could be worse, I might add.

Here’s Your Prompt: Write about an irritation. Something that bothered you (or your character!) incessantly, perhaps for hours or days at a time. Maybe its even something you (or your character) brought upon yourself. (Ahem.) This doesn’t have to be an injury of any sort. It could be a pesky little brother, a whining little sister, an office-mate who rattles her spoon around her mug while she stirs her already well-stirred java. Maybe there’s a stone in the toe of your shoe, or, the tag on the back of your shirt is slicing your neck. Write about something that persistently nags, and about how the frustration is handled. Do you tattle on the sibling? Rip out the tag? Smash your co-workers mug, still full off frothy joe?