A true eye-opener

Imbestigador had another sex den raid story last Saturday. Like I always say in this corner, sex sells and it has become staple fare in most programs that do exposés.

Last Saturday’s Imbestigador sex story, however, was valid, had a new twist and had to be pursued. It was about sex in a cemetery.

In a town in Laguna, somebody tipped off the program regarding the peddling of sex in a cemetery. The sex establishment actually had its main headquarters (if you can call it that). But either the space is limited or business is booming that the operators had to use the nearby cemetery as an annex for its operations.

Maybe my vocabulary isn’t really all that wide, but I simply cannot describe such desecration for the dearly departed. We’re not even getting into the public scandal issue here.

What makes me sick in the stomach is the disrespect for the dead. More than a decade ago, Mario O’Hara brought to the screen the classic story of Babae sa Bubungang Lata and shows how the female lead peddles her body to patrons who are willing to have a tryst with her on top of tombs in the cemetery where there is actually a community of people who lives there. Obviously her clientele is the type that can afford to pay only her and will never have enough to bring her to the Manila Peninsula Hotel for their very private undertaking. I bet that happens in real life. We can only pity and pray for individuals like her who are driven to this act of desperation.

But for a sex establishment to have its operations in a cemetery should not be tolerated. We belong to a culture where we are taught to respect the dead and even their final resting place. May the owners of that sex den rest – no, not in peace (we are not supposed to wish for another person’s death) – but behind prison bars where we can only hope they don’t use their entrepreneurial skills once more for illegal purposes.

The better and more substantial story in last Saturday’s Imbestigador, however, is the expose on the commercial sale of contact lenses.

At my age I still don’t wear eyeglasses and I can only surmise three guesses why this is so:

1) I ate a lot of carrots as a kid and still continue to do so.

2) Good genes on my father’s side where an aunt (Paulina) was still doing needle work without eyeglasses at past 80.

3) I’m in denial.

I went to Ideal Vision some time back, but I was turned away because I was able to read those letters in that chart used to check if your eyesight is still good. Couldn’t it be that I have such fantastic memory that I was able to memorize the chart?

Since I didn’t want to leave the store empty-handed, I got instead those frames without what we call “grade.” For a while, I even came out on TV wearing eyeglasses that were designed not for me to see better, but look better.

But contact lenses I probably would never even attempt to wear. If I got it correctly, contact lenses came around in the early ‘70s. My Aunt Dolly (she’s from my mother’s side where everyone is “blind”) began wearing those that time and it was then that I realized how inconvenient it was to be sporting contact lenses. It was murder not only on the wearer, but on the people around her, as well.

On the many times she’d drop a contact lens, nobody was allowed to get inside her room (I liked staying with her because she had always been fun) until she found that missing “eye.” She had to be on all fours looking for it – feeling the entire floor for the missing object.

In the mid-‘80s came this fad where it became fashionable to be wearing colored contact lenses. Those even with perfect vision sported contacts to look more attractive – or so they thought – with their grey eyes.

I never realized this was still in fashion (or is it a comeback?) until I saw Imbestigador last Saturday evening. Contact lenses are now very hip with the young who can buy several pairs (in various colors) cheap.

No, these are not sold in legitimate optical shops, but in stores where – so Imbestigador pointed out – proper sanitation is not even practiced. The sales clerk would handle such delicate merchandise without even making sure her hands are clean.

The products, as they turned out, were also proven to be unhygienic and not fit to be sold to the public. The program interviewed those who tried sporting those cheap contact lenses and most of them complained of discomfort and eye irritation. One case turned out to be serious and let’s hope it does not lead to blindness.

Eye experts were also made to speak in the show and they all warned the viewers regarding contact lenses dos and don’ts. And those cheap contact lenses patronized mostly by the young should be avoided – they were emphatic about that.

Let us listen to their advice. Let us not experiment or tamper unnecessarily with our vision because eyesight is truly important.

As a public service program, Imbestigador had already done its part by warning the young and those who do not know any better regarding the harmful use of those cheap contact lenses. I’m glad the show did a story on that because it can save millions of eyesight.

If I have to describe that Imbestigador episode, I would say it was truly an eye-opener.