When Billy was about five years old, his parents informed his teacher that his reading comprehension was just fine and he was keeping up well with the rest of the class, but he might be struggling a bit with seeing the bright side of things. Billy’s teacher had noticed that he was much more wary than other children and would always over-fill his glasses of milk, cautious of letting them rest at half full. So, his parents decided to send him to the internationally renowned local optometrist and run some tests.

“Just go ahead and cover your left eye and read out that line of letters for me.”

“A... Q... Z... P... U... R... attempting to put a bandaid on a bullet hole.”

“Okay, right eye please.”

The doctor diagnosed Billy with a case of short-sighted pessimism. He was fitted with a pair of -2.00 prescription rose-colored glasses for his optimism and a pair of blue-light glasses for when he wanted to stay up late at night watching TV.

After that, Billy’s outlook on life changed for the better. When Billy got a D in school, he figured that if you add a colon to the left it makes a smiley face, and a smiley face for a grade couldn’t be all that bad! The exam was on identifying the issues with American Imperialism. When Billy’s soccer team lost their match 2-27, he remarked to his teammates that at least all the pretty girls had come to watch them play, and when his teammates beat him up for embarrassing them, he commented on how his bruises would go just swell with the pinkish hue of everything else in the world.

Billy was living a beautiful life in blissful ignorance. There was just one problem.

Every night before bed, Billy would take off his glasses, and everything would go neutral. He would scream in agony and fear over the state of the world, crying himself to sleep until he woke up the next day and popped those bad boys back on. Those eight and a half hours were petrifying, and his parents had no idea what to do. So, they took him back to the optometrist.

This time, Billy was given LASIK surgery with rose-colored lenses. And all was swell again, only now Billy had the opposite problem. With his rose-colored lens on twenty-four-seven, he was just too darn excited about the “possibilities of tomorrow” that he wasn’t able to fall asleep. He would stay up all night, laughing about how the world looked like God had left a red sock in the wash.

Due to the lack of sleep, Billy struggled a lot with paying attention in school. His teacher recommended he see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist supplied Billy with adderall, and after that, well, Billy was just fine.