Partly Cloudy, 64°
Brown students know that the start of September signals the last few weeks of beautiful, warm weather. But hikers and beach bums take heed: Providence ophthalmologist Dr. David McCondry says that if we spend all month enjoying the great outdoors, we run the risk of getting too much of a good thing. Excessive exposure to sunlight may transform our fun times into terrible ones, McCondry suggests, by transforming our eyes into suns.
“It’s clear from my preliminary data that when the sun’s UV rays penetrate the human eye directly for a sustained period of time, eyes like miniature suns can result,” McCondry shouted from beneath a sun-resistant tarp. “Your mom told the truth when she said that starting at the sun would turn your eyes into suns, just like she wasn’t lying when she said that playing baseball too close to the neighbor’s window could turn you eyes into baseballs."
The public response to McCondry’s grim findings has been both fearful and grateful. “I’ve always been terrified by this phenomenon, but now I feel rightfully terrified,” said Pawtucket mother Gilda Nitti, who believes that the posters of partially nude men in her daughter’s bedroom may turn the eyes of her entire family into testicles. “Finally, someone was bold enough to speak the truth about what I consider to be our nation’s most pressing bodily-transformation related threat,” continued Nitti.
To avoid developing eyes like suns, McCondry advises avoidance of the actual sun, along with an attitude of constant vigilance toward anything that resembles or recalls the sun, such as eggs sunny side up or the Chicago Sun-Times. “Previously doctors have told people to wear a hat, but with this new information in mind, I recommend wearing two hats: one over each eye,” McCondry said. “It can’t hurt to wear hats over your hands and your shoulders too. One can never wear too many hats in times like these.”
In regards to all other spherical objects, McCondry says we have little choice but to wait for the inevitable transformation of our eyes to occur. “Unfortunately, we live in a world defined by its roundness. The sun is round, eggs are round and most small mammals are basically round. Our eyes, which have served us faithfully for so long, have gone rogue and will happily become any of these round objects.”
Concluded McCondry: “We’re just lucky that the Earth itself is flat. Otherwise, we’d be in real trouble.”
