Ol' wonky eyes is back

Nils Ling

A friend of mine was taking her car to the same garage I use to get some work done, and she asked me which mechanic I preferred. She knows that a good mechanic to a man is like a good hairdresser to a woman “you find one and you stick with them, even if it means selling your house and moving to another province.

I said, “Whatever you do, don’t let Bob work on your car. Get the guy ... dang, I can’t remember his name. Ask for the guy with the wonky eye.”

“I am not going to go to the counter at a garage and ask to speak to 'the guy with the wonky eye',” said my friend, and I had to admit she had a point.

Although I’m sure he knows he has a wonky eye. And I’m pretty sure he knows we know. You can’t really hide a wonky eye, unless you want to wear sunglasses all the time and have people think you’re a pretentious ass. Given a choice, I’d rather people thought of me as having a slight physical impairment as opposed to a major personality defect.

I can talk about wonky eyes with a certain degree of equanimity, because I had a wonky eye growing up. I ended up enduring two surgeries to correct it, but for years I was “the guy with the wonky eye”. My right eye was just fine, but my left had a mind of its own.

In class, I’d be reading the blackboard with one eye while the other was checking out the mini-skirt on the girl a row over. And the beauty of it was, if she noticed, she was either not quite sure if I was looking at her legs or too polite to call me on it because I might be really sensitive.

At times it did throw people, and you could tell it made them uncomfortable and aware of everything they said around me. And I have to say there were other times when I amused myself by making my eye wander on purpose, just to see which one people tried to follow. Or I’d switch it on and off to freak them out.

And while it did give me some cheap amusement, mostly I hated my wonky eye because it made me different. I thought if I could get it fixed, I’d finally be happy with how I looked.

So I did. And I wasn’t.

I mean, who is happy with everything about how they look? It’s always something. I have a friend who is objectively very attractive, but if you ask her, she’s pretty sure that people notice her “stubby nose”. (It’s not “stubby”. In fact, it’s a cute little nose. But she’s not going to have any of that.)

Once I got my eye fixed, I immediately realized that the major problem with my looks was never my wonky eye “it was always my crooked teeth. My two front teeth overlapped (this was in the days when orthodontia wasn’t “routine–), and that was why I was so homely.

Then I got my front teeth knocked out playing football, and the crowns they replaced them with were fine and straight, and I realized it had never been my eye or my teeth that stood between me and “handsome” “it was my marked lack of chin.

Seriously. No chin at all. Lip “neck.

My Mom was exasperated. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t realize I was a perfectly handsome young man, and that these little quirks I obsessed about gave my face “character”. “We are not ants,” my Mom used to say. “we’re supposed to have different faces. That’s what makes life interesting. Wouldn’t it be awful if we all shared the same face?”

“Yeah,” I would say. “If it was mine.”

I didn’t want features that gave my face “character”. “Character” is a code word moms use that really means “ugly”. And here I was, burdened with a face loaded with “character”. No doubt destined to go out with girls who had “great personalities”.

(Then came the zits. Yeah, being me as a teenager was loads of fun.)

I’m over all that now. My face is my face, for good or ill. It doesn’t seem to scare young children. A beard hides my major flaws. And my eye only goes wonky when I’m really tired.

Or when I have to appear to be paying attention, but really want to check out that mini-skirt in the next row.

If you happen to notice me looking, please don’t say anything. I'm very sensitive about it.

This feature: From Nils Ling’s book Truths and Half Truths. A collection of some of his most memorable and hilarious columns.