Eye Color, and Geckos

Since returning from China last month, I've noticed myself paying attention to people's eye color a lot. "Wow," I find myself saying. "She has really nice green eyes." And then I'll talk to someone else and think about how blue their eyes are, or how Julie has really nice brown eyes. Even the people with uninteresting eye color (I've taken up saying that I have no eye color, so I would certainly fall into this category) get special examination from me these days.

I didn't use to be fascinated with people's eyes. But I think I have an explanation: people in America don't all have the same eye color. I never particularly noticed when I was in China that everyone's eyes were the kind of black-brown you have in mind when you're little and can't tell the difference between your mom's dark brown hair and black. But now I'm back in America and it's like people are eye candy. I mean, their eyes are candy.

I was thinking about this, or maybe I wasn't, as I drove to Bible study this evening. Then I saw there was a gecko on the hood of my car. This wasn't the first time a gecko's been all up on my hood. A few days ago I noticed one try to jump off but ran into the car again a few inches up the windshield. Then it jumped again and flew up and out of sight.

Well, I revved up as I got onto Archer and didn't see a happy end in sight for the little gecko along for the ride. "Don't jump, little buddy," I urged him.

At stoplights he roamed a little. He gradually worked his way up next to the windshield wipers, where he distracted me from the road so much that I had to totally disregard his life in order to preserve mine.

But for several minutes, he just looked into my eyes. I, of course, was too responsible to return anything but a look of surprise that he still had eyes that hadn't been run over, but it was a bonding moment. Particularly a bonding moment when I was driving at 45 and could see his reptilian flab whipping with the wind. But good ole' van der Waals forces kept his feet pasted to my window like a Jedi under Vader's deathgrip.

He should just be glad he didn't hitch a ride when I was driving to Orlando. I expect help paying for gas then. He lasted for the trip, though, and when I got out of my car before I went inside I made sure he was still there. He was, clinging now to my driver's side door. I thought it was a good moment for him and hoped I didn't decapitate his gecko head when I shut the door. I didn't, though.

The moral of this story is that if I notice your eye color, you're probably not crawling on my windshield when the car is moving.