We are waiting for bacon to be delivered to our table. I am sipping a too-spicy Virgin Mary that I hope will clear out my pollen-irritated sinus cavity.

Chris is talking about something important, his music perhaps, it escapes me now, but I couldn't concentrate on anything he was saying because he had something stuck to his lower eyelash. I stared at it, thinking it must fall off the next time he blinks. But it didn't. It hung there, suspended above the rim of his glasses, bobbing with the weight of itself as he spoke.

Finally I say something.

"Hey, um, you've got a thing-" I make a swiping gesture at my own face to mirror the problem.

"What? Oh." He takes off his glasses, sets them on the table, where I can't help but think bacon will nest briefly in a few minutes, before being devoured by the two of us.

He rubs at his eye, and puts his glasses back on.

"Better?" he asks, then goes right back into whatever he was saying.

I still can't focus on it though, because now the offending particle has moved up to his top eyelash, where it looks to me like it will drop fiendishly into his eye at any moment, blinding him for life.

"So I just really think that my printing is going to take priority over music for a while, at least until-"

"I'm sorry, I have to tell you: the thing is still really close to your eye."

"Agh! Will you stop? Why can't we just have a conversation without you picking stuff off of me?"

I admit; I am highly distracted by foreign things attached to the faces of those I'm conversing with. I can't think of anything else until the thing/s are removed. It's a major flaw, as there's always something stuck to someone.

A friend just informed me the other night that the night her boyfriend came back to town after being away for a year, that the first thing she did was reach over, as he was speaking, and pick something out of his teeth. He didn't even miss a beat, just kept talking. How do we get to that point?