Kiss and Tell

In honor of our 20th wedding anniversary, which was this past week on March 2, I'm going to tell you what Bruce and I did on the first night of our honeymoon trip:

Bruce and I, being kids, decided we would honeymoon in Los Angeles and go to Disneyland together. We borrowed my mom's car—which we thought would survive the trip better than Bruce's '69 Cougar—and drove away. That first night we stopped at the Peppermill in Mesquite, NV (which, by the way, was a new—and almost the only—resort there at the time). So we got a little room, and I went to draw a bath and slip into something a little more comfortable. While I was in the bathroom, Bruce was in the bedroom getting ready for bed. After a minute or so I could tell that he was a little frustrated so I stepped out to see what was wrong. It turns out that he forgot to bring something very important: his contact-lens removing tool.

When Bruce first started wearing contacts, he was given this little suction-cup thing that would pull his lens off of his eyeball. The idea was that he could use it until he learned to blink the lenses out of his eyes, but he just got used to using the suction cup all the time. And now here we were, in Nevada, and he didn't have it. He tried and tried to get his contact lenses out, but to no avail. Pretty soon I was there trying to help. I was poking my fingers around in his eyes, and pulling on his eyelids, and doing what I could to help get the lenses out. No good. We both tried and tried and tried, but couldn't get those lenses out of his eyes. We worked at it for nearly 45 minutes, and we were both getting more daring about how I touched him, but no luck. Finally, during a brief rest, Bruce had a thought: He was used to using suction to get the lenses out of his eyes; what if he got a drinking straw and I sucked the lenses out?

OK. I can totally understand that this is not how he wanted to spend the first night of our honeymoon. (Me either!) But that straw idea convinced me that he'd gone over the edge; that he'd lost his marbles. Still, we were both tired and frustrated and neither of us could think of a better solution. So Bruce went off to the bar and asked the nice bartender for a straw, and then came back with a fat, red drinking straw. He gave it to me and said, "Put one end in your mouth, then center the other end on my contact and then suck." I told him he was crazy, but I figured we'd already tried everything else. What else could I do?

So I've got this red straw in my mouth, and I'm looking down it's length into Bruce's eyeball. And here was Bruce's perspective: He could see my face and the straw in my mouth with one eye, and with the other eye he had a bird's-eye view straight up the straw and into my mouth. I began the procedure with much trepidation; put the straw in place and sucked on it. And . . .

It worked! He says my eyes got wide, and I looked really surprised, and with the straw still in my mouth I squealed, "Ooooo!" and dropped the lens into his waiting hand to be cleaned and put away for the night. And we both laughed and laughed. Then the other eye. Ah, sweet success! Oh, relief! And lots of giggling.

That's how we removed Bruce's contact lenses every night of our honeymoon. When we got back home he practiced—and became very good at—blinking them out of his eyes.

And that is the story of our first honeymoon night—or at least as much as you get to hear about it. ;-)