Lifestyle

My eyes are different sizes and colors. Will I ever find a date who doesn’t flinch?

Published

1 year ago

July 30, 2024

My eyes are different sizes and colors. Will I ever find a date who doesn’t flinch?

I’m sitting across from an orthodontist, sipping a lukewarm coffee and gliding through typical first-date banter about L.A. traffic. But as this Hinge experiment with his simp-y Harry Styles hair and $200 sweatpants tries to lock eyes with me, I’m still staring just past his shoulder at a fake eucalyptus plant. I am silently praying this passes for eye contact, because I know what’s coming when my gaze meets his. The flinch.

If this term isn’t in your immediate search history, the flinch is an inverse of the male gaze; a jaw-tightening, ball-shriveling squint usually directed at my face. It is a subtle move that says without question: We are not the same.

Because I’m blind, and he isn’t.

My brain crackles with anxiety. Now I’m thinking about all those nice folks with herpes and how they have medication to help keep everything under wraps for a while. Now, I’m longing to have herpes and a vast collection of Valtrex as I down my drink. I need to order another round. Do it — do it now. Before this man notes with absolute certainty that you do not have anything close to the deep brown eyes he thought he saw in your dating profile, before he excuses himself and that second drink never happens.

Dating, in theory, is fun. Meeting a stranger at a cafe covered in hipsters and Moroccan tile, sitting at a too-small table and pretending to be interested in the Americano-length version of someone else’s life, can be total fire. But if you’re me, dating mostly makes you want to haul it outta there like you were in an episode of “The Last of Us.”

Ayla Harrison developed the eye condition retinopathy of prematurity as a newborn.

My face is unfortunate. It is lopsided. My eyes are different sizes and colors. My right eye is lazy, shriveled and blind; it moves like an out-of-control marble circling a drain. My left eye suffers hemorrhages that can cause episodes of total blindness. The reason for my Picasso of a face is because of a retinal disease I snag after my mother goes into labor three months early. She looks that Medicaid doctor right in his very symmetrical face and says through grunts and gritted teeth: “My girl doesn’t like to wait.”

Doctors move me to an ICU and crank my oxygen levels to 100% to keep me stable. Later, a nurse with nicotine stains on her fingernails, tells my parents I have developed retinopathy of prematurity, an eye condition caused by all that one-hundo oxygen. The disease will open me up to a revolving door of vision issues for life.

Then there is rushing. More doctors. A surgeon barely salvages the sight in my left eye, but my right eye can’t be saved. They tell my parents I’ll be blind in that eye forever. A teeny tiny Cyclops. I weigh less than a pound. I am so small the surgeon can place my entire hand on his pinkie nail.

And for a moment, everyone is staring.

The first boy I love has a rat-tail. We’re both 8 years old. To win his affection, on a dare, I decide to eat a cockroach off the ground during recess. Kids point and lose their collective 8-year-old mind, but the attention makes me feel electric. Then he makes direct eye contact with me. I look down; my performance upended in an instant. He’s staring at me like someone asked him to find Waldo and he stops on my mismatched marble-y eyes. The baby fat in his jaw tightens. Then it happens. My first flinch.

I stop going to recess.

At dinner, I mention my eye contact problem to my mother. She nurses her third rum and Diet Coke and says: “Look boys in the eye like you want to steal their wallet.”

By the time I reach high school, I can’t address another person unless my eyes are glued to the floor.

In the teenage dating hierarchy, I am a hard pass. Boys in artfully shredded Abercrombie jeans flinch in a chain reaction of disgust as I pass them in the halls. Cheerleaders corner me and demand to know what is wrong with my eyes. The cheer captain shoves me into a locker. I latch onto her perfect French braids and pull down hard until my knuckles go white. Somewhere JV cheerleaders chant “Fight!” like it is a pep rally.

Harrison as a child with her hair in two ponytails.

And for a moment, everyone is staring.

I walk home alone with a busted lip and decide teenagers in my small Southern town are just wolves in Adidas track pants.

Years happen. I leave my swampy hometown. Before I go, my childhood eye doctor warns me that I have the eyes of an 80-year-old. I ignore him because I am 22.

I avoid discussing my ROP with anyone, and instead, I diligently plaster my bangs to my forehead to hide my blind eye. It’s a trick I learn working as a waitress at a neon-tinged strip club in some blink-of-an-eye Florida town that pushes all-you-can-eat oysters and lap dances until 3 a.m. I mimic the dance moves of the strippers. Just like the girls swaying onstage in G-strings, I want to feel that burn-a-hole-in-your-pocket desire from men. A dancer, this oiled-up pole ballerina, tells me about a weekend trip she took to L.A. “Life there is like a buzzsaw knocked up a glitter bomb,” she says.

A month later, I move to Santa Monica. I slide into the rip current of L.A. men and let myself fall in love in the time it takes to change a channel. But the relationships either fade or split open like cantaloupe dropped on hot pavement. And then, on one random Wednesday, my left eye hemorrhages and fills with blood. And suddenly, I cannot see.

Again, more doctors — specialists this time. Their offices are in tall towers. And like in many niche areas of medicine, there are silence and bright lights and a lot of nodding. There are lasers and emergency surgeries. Eventually I can see again, but not without a lot of help from a perpetual weekly doctor appointment. I make friends with the 89-year-old nana-and-pop-pop set in the lobby. I am there so often my mother asks if this ophthalmologist gives out a rewards card like at Yogurtland.

A portrait of Ayla Harrison in an orange scarf.

My eyes bleed while I’m in the shower and during yoga. My sight snaps off like a light while I’m at the supermarket. My episodes of blindness go on for months — and still — my mother asks: “When are you going to meet someone? And can you send artisanal doughnuts through the mail?”

This only reminds me of what’s coming: the flinch.

I need a new plan. Or a therapist. Instead, I call my ophthalmologist, a woman I’ve seen so many times I probably fund a fraction of her vacation house.

In the exam room, my ophthalmologist decides to fit me with therapeutic contact lenses. She explains these fancy lenses will protect my diseased eye and — bonus — they will make my eyes appear to be the same color. She finishes her adjustments, offers me a mirror like I’m in a Marvel movie, and waits for applause. I study my blind eye, tucked in its new costume, and opt for a late-night Google question instead: What if I got another procedure done on my eyes?

I suggest more surgeries — cutting-edge surgeries to fix my bad eye and its marble-y wobbling. My doctor pops a trained, reassuring smile and fires off a lecture on the dangers of continuing to rip open my eyes on the regular. The only thing all of those surgeries will do is make my condition worse, she tells me.

Two weeks later, in a different medical tower, I’m meeting with my retinal specialist this time. I hit him with my question about correcting my mismatched eyes. The response is identical — a list of horrors. He pauses to add, “But you are a single woman now. So maybe think about it,” and moves to a new patient without another word.

Tears hit me in a wet burst as my doctor shouts to an 82-year-old in the next room: “How are you doing today?” The door closes behind him.

Harrison crosses a street in jeans and a black top.

I call my mother between sobs. I manage to say, “I can’t wear this lens.” I stammer on about how the lens is just a fancy bandage; a device to hide the fact that my vision loss is a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. And who’s going to love that? My mom patiently waits out my sobs. Finally she says, “What sight you have left could go before I finish this sentence, but no one needs to be OK with that except you.”

Then she asks me if I’ve seen Reese Witherspoon do that one dance on TikTok yet.

Weeks later, I go on a date with a man. I sit across from him at a too-small table at a Peruvian restaurant on 4th Street in Long Beach. His voice is a mix of Spanish slang and a SoCal surfer lilt. And I swear he never drops eye contact. Normally this would wreck me. But with my new lens, I feel an odd new confidence. So, I commit first-date seppuku and tell him about my lens and my vision loss. As I talk, my anxiety hijacks my thoughts, and I immediately regret opening my mouth. Because I’m waiting for the flinch — for that lightning-fast jolt of expected pain. And then I realize I am too busy future spiraling to notice that my date is ordering a second round of drinks.

I am too busy to notice that our date is still going.

It goes until ice melts into the dark amber whiskey in our sweaty cocktail glasses. It goes until it is the soft yellow of morning sunlight. It goes until he holds my hand on a crowded street, and I know it’s my turn to look him in the eye. At a crosswalk, I turn my head and stare at this man.

And for a solid three seconds, I have an overwhelming urge to steal his wallet. I smile. Somewhere, my mother is right.

Then he asks, “Can I kiss you?” I nod. He leans in and kisses me right on my diseased little eyes, right in the middle of that crowded street.

And for a moment, everyone is staring.

The author is a playwright and screenwriter based in L.A. She’s on Instagram: @outinthestacks

Lifestyle

Sunday Puzzle: Pet theory

Published

5 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

On-air challenge

Today’s puzzle is called “Pet Theory.” Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word start starts PE- and the second word starts T-. (Ex. What walkways at intersections carry –> PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC)

1. Chart that lists all the chemical elements

2. Place for a partridge in “The 12 Days of Christmas”

3. Male voyeur

4. What a coach gives a team during halftime in the locker room

5. Set of questions designed to reveal your traits

6. Something combatants sign to end a war

7. Someone who works with you one-on-one with physical exercises

8. Member of the Who

9. Incisors, canines, and premolars that grow in after you’re a baby

10. Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast to score this at the Olympics

11. What holds the fuel in a British car

Last week’s challenge

Last week’s challenge was a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.

Challenge answer

12 × 34 × 5 – 6 – 7 + 8 – 9 [or] 1 + 2 + 345 × 6 – 7 × 8 + 9

Winner

Daniel Abramson of Albuquerque, N.M.

This week’s challenge

This week’s challenge comes from listener Ward Hartenstein. Think of a well-known couple whose names are often said in the order of _____ & _____. Seven letters in the names in total. Combine those two names, change an E to an S, and rearrange the result to name another famous duo who are widely known as _____ & _____.

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 15 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.

Lifestyle

Paul Gripp, one of the last great orchid explorers and hybridizers, dies at 93

Published

6 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Paul Gripp, one of the last great orchid explorers and hybridizers, dies at 93

After retirement, Paul Gripp still visited the nursery often, helping with weeding, as he’s doing here in this file photo, or just talking with customers.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Orchid expert Paul Francis Gripp, a renowned orchid breeder, author and speaker who traveled the world in search of unusual varieties for his nursery, Santa Barbara Orchid Estates, died in a Santa Barbara hospice center on Jan. 2 after a short illness. He was 93.

In a Facebook post on Jan. 4, Gripp’s sister, Toni Gripp Brink, said her brother died “after suffering a brain hemorrhage and loss of consciousness in his longtime Santa Barbara home. He was surrounded by his loving family, day and night, for about a week in a Santa Barbara hospice before he passed.”

Gripp was renowned in the orchid world for his expertise, talks and many prize-winning hybrids such as the Santa Barbara Sunset, a striking Laelia anceps and Laeliocattleya Ancibarina cross with rich salmon, peach and magenta hues that was bred to thrive outside in California’s warmer climes.

In a 2023 interview, Gripp’s daughter, Alice Gripp, who owns and operates the business also known as SBOE with her brother, Parry, said Santa Barbara Sunset is still one of the nursery’s top sellers.

A vibrant orchid with salmon and peach-colored petals and a raspberry and deep-yellow throat.

Gripp was a popular speaker, author and avid storyteller who talked about his experiences searching for orchids in the Philippines, Myanmar (then known as Burma), India, the high Andes, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, New Guinea and other parts of the world, fostering exchanges with international growers and collecting what plants he could to propagate, breed and sell in his Santa Barbara nursery.

“Working in orchids has been like living in a dream,” Gripp said in a 2023 interview. “There’s thousands of different kinds, and I got to travel all over to find things people would want. But the first orchid I found? It was in Topanga Creek, Epipactis gigantea, our native orchid, and you can still find them growing in [California’s] streams and canyons today.”

Gripp was “one of the last orchid people who went looking for these plants in situ — where they occurred in nature,” said Lauris Rose, one of his former employees who is now president of the Santa Barbara International Orchid Show and owner of Cal-Orchid Inc., a neighboring nursery that she started with her late husband James Rose, another SBOE employee who died in January 2025.

These days, Rose said in an interview on Thursday, orchids are considered “something to enhance the beauty of your home,” but when she and her husband first began working with Gripp in the 1970s, “they were something that totally captivated your interest and instilled a wanderlust spirit that made you want to explore the species in the plant kingdom, as they grew in nature, not as produced in various colors from laboratories.”

She said Gripp’s charm and self-deprecating demeanor also helped fuel his success. “People flocked for the experience of walking around that nursery and learning things from him,” Rose said in a 2023 interview.

“Paul lectured all over the world, teaching people about different species of orchids in a very accessible way,” Rose said. “He didn’t act like a professor. He got up there with anecdotes like, ‘One time I climbed up this tree trying to reach a plant in another tree, and all these red ants infested my entire body, so I had to take off all my clothes and rub all these ants off my body.’ A lot of people’s lectures are boring as dirt, but Paul could command a room. He had charisma, and it was infectious.”

Gripp was born on Oct. 18, 1932, in Greater Los Angeles and grew up in Topanga Canyon. He went to Santa Monica College and then UCLA, where he earned a degree in horticulture, and worked as a gardener on weekends, primarily for Robert J. Chrisman, a wealthy Farmers Insurance executive and hobbyist orchid grower who lived in Playa del Rey.

After college, Gripp served a stint in the Navy after the Korean War, and when he got out, he called Chrisman, his old boss, who invited him to come to Santa Barbara and manage the orchid nursery he was starting there.

A man in a blue jacket and cap bends over a table of sprouting young orchids.

The nursery opened in 1957, with Gripp as its manager, and 10 years later, after Chrisman died, he purchased SBOE from the Chrisman family.

In 1986, Gripp and his then-wife, Anne Gripp, divorced. In the settlement, Gripp got their cliff-side Santa Barbara home with its breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean, and his former wife got the nursery. When Anne Gripp died, her children Parry and Alice inherited the nursery and took over its operation in 1994, Alice Gripp said in 2023.

Gripp officially retired from the nursery, but he was a frequent helper several times a week, weeding, dividing plants, answering customer questions and regaling them with his orchid-hunting stories.

“Paul loves plants, but what he loves most in life is teaching other people about orchids,” Alice Gripp said in 2023. “He chats with them, and I try to take their money.”

Gripp wasn’t a huge fan of the ubiquitous moth orchids (Phalaenopsis) sold en masse in most grocery store floral departments, but he was philosophical about their popularity.

They’re good for indoor plants, he said in 2023, but don’t expect them to live very long. “A house is a house, not a jungle,” he said, “so there’s a 99% chance they’re going to die. But they’re pretty cheap [to buy], so it works out pretty good.”

“He used to say, ‘I’m an orchid man. I love every orchid equally,’ and he does,” his daughter said in 2023. “I don’t know if he would run into a burning building to save a Phalaenopsis from Trader Joe’s, but he told me once, ‘I’ve never thrown out a plant.’ And that’s probably true. When he was running things, the aisles were so crammed people were always knocking plants off the benches because they couldn’t walk through.”

Gripp is survived by his children and his second wife, Janet Gripp, as well as his sister Toni Gripp Brink. In a post on the nursery’s website on Jan. 5, the Gripp family asked for privacy.

“We are still very much grieving Paul’s sudden passing,” the message read. “If you would like to share your memories of Paul, please send them by mail or email for us to read in the days to come. We will welcome your remembrances and gather these into a scrapbook to keep at SBOE. We appreciate your understanding of our need for peaceful reflection at this time. In the coming weeks, we will announce our plans for honoring and remembering Paul with our orchid friends.”

Lifestyle

Veteran actor T.K. Carter, known for ‘The Thing’ and ‘Punky Brewster,’ dies at 69

Published

17 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Veteran actor T.K. Carter, known for ‘The Thing’ and ‘Punky Brewster,’ dies at 69

Actor TK Carter arrives for the premiere of “The LA Riot” at the Tribeca Film Festival, Monday, April 25, 2005, in New York.

Mary Altaffer/AP

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Mary Altaffer/AP

DUARTE, Calif. — Veteran actor T.K. Carter, who appeared in the horror film “The Thing” and “Punky Brewster” on television, has died at the age of 69.

Carter was declared dead Friday evening after deputies responded to a call regarding an unresponsive male in Duarte, California, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Police did not disclose a cause of death or other details, but said no foul play was suspected.

Thomas Kent “T.K.” Carter was born Dec. 18, 1956, in New York City and was raised in Southern California.

He began his career in stand-up comedy and with acting roles. Carter had been acting for years before a breakthrough role as Nauls the cook in John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic, “The Thing.” He also had a recurring role in the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster.”

Other big-screen roles include “Runaway Train” in 1985, “Ski Patrol” in 1990 and “Space Jam” in 1996.

“T.K. Carter was a consummate professional and a genuine soul whose talent transcended genres,” his publicist, Tony Freeman, said in a statement. “He brought laughter, truth, and humanity to every role he touched. His legacy will continue to inspire generations of artists and fans alike.”