‘Ol Blue Eyes

Last week, while on a job site inspec­tion some build­ing foun­da­tions1, I had what must be the strangest con­ver­sa­tion with a con­trac­tor yet:

Con­trac­tor (to me): Yeah, so we’ll just have the addi­tion­al bars deliv­ered in the morn­ing rather than attempt use some replace­ments… say, is that your nat­ur­al eye col­or or do wear some sort of contacts?

Well, uh, I do wear con­tacts, but this is my nat­ur­al eye col­or. I sup­pose I get that a lot, though.

Con­trac­tor (to soils guy): Seri­ous­ly, take a look at this guys eyes. Isn’t that the wildest eye col­or you’ve ever seen?

At this point, I have lit­tle choice but to stare at the soils guy right in the eye like a crazed person.

Soils guy: Huh. I think my baby will have sim­i­lar eyes, since my wife is white and has green eyes. (He’s olive skinned and obvi­ous­ly for­eign-born, per­haps Greek or Turkish).

Con­trac­tor: Well, they’re real­ly wild look­ing, any­way, man. Talk to you next week.

I have a brief con­ver­sa­tion with the soils guy before walk­ing to my car sim­ply shak­ing my head. It’s not every­day I have a burly con­struc­tion super­in­ten­dent com­ment on my eye color.

1. Foun­da­tions which may or may not, Kevin, have a box of voodoo mag­ic under­neath them. [↩]