spiker's blog: "Pratfalls"

I was on duty last Saturday and had to answer phones and attend to walk-in clients because there is no reception cover on weekends.  Fifteen minutes before closing time a family group walked in and asked about the remaining balance on their accounts.  No worries - I checked the computer records and gave them the info they needed.  The only problem was that the guy is without a doubt the most boss-eyed person I have seen in years. Seriously, this guy's left eye was looking straight at me (Northwards) but his right eye was looking North-Eastwards and up towards the ceiling somewhere!  I'm sure he must have had a 270-degree field of vision with his goat-like occular arrangement.

The biggest problem occurred when I looked up from the computer screen and accidently looked him in the wrong eye!  So I started having a conversation with his wonky eye and I found myself strangely fascinated by his wayward orb instead of actually listening to what he was saying.  After I asked him to repeat himself once, it suddenly dawned on me that I would stand a far better chance of actually having a lucid conversation with him if I 'switched' eyes.  So I deftly swapped to his left eye and carried on attending to his next query, assuming that I had gotten away with my dreadful blunder.

He wanted to point out that the top-left corner of the columbarium where his niche is situated has a crack in it.  I immediately imagined the difficulty this man must have of actually looking at the top-left of anything.  Surely he would find it much easier to spy the top-right of any object because his wonky eye would be ideal for that purpose.  My confusion must have been evident from the expression on my face because he started to gesticulate with his hands to try to indicate what he meant.  It took me some time to show any level of comprehension because I found my mind wandering - what must his vision be like!  I wondered if his chameleon-like eyes were capable of sending their different images to his brain simultaneously and if his brain was equal to the task of processing both images at once.

At this point I think he was starting to get annoyed, judging from the expression in his left eye (his right was scanning the ceiling for spider webs).  That late in the day, it took a considerable conscious effort to get back to the business at hand and answer his query to his satisfaction.  I then attended to his sister's query, trying my best not to focus on her enormous buck teeth.  All business concluded, the happy siblings and their strange-looking mother left and I started to shut the office down.  I had to look out the window at the parking lot to see which one of them would get behind the wheel...