Big-eyed people, we must band together.

“I love how you blink.”

Once upon a time (or a few years ago), I was told that very thing. And once upon a time, I was very confused about that thought.

How do you love the act of blinking, I asked. Especially one person’s blink over the next?

My reaction to this strange compliment only resulted in a small gathering of people staring at my eyes and waiting for the next time my lids dropped. Someone responded that my blink was very deliberate. Very slow.

Of course it is. My eyes are big. It’s only natural that it takes longer to blink, right? The lids have a longer distance to travel. If I blinked quicker, I don’t know, I’d end up sanding my pupils or something. Right? RIGHT?

The whole on-display situation brought back horrible memories of middle school where similar events were all too common.

“She does weird things with her eyes,” one girl delightedly squealed to her friends. Before I knew it, an anxious crowd of way-more-popular-than-me preteens were ogling my poor eyes, waiting for them to do “that weird thing.”

That weird thing? A nervous twitch. Which was exaggerated by my oversized orbs of eyes. On anyone else, the motion would probably have gone unnoticed.

I’ve conversed with other big-eyed females. And I’ve discovered that my bizarre stories are (bizarrely) not that unique.

My sister, who has the exact same eyes that I do (thanks, Mom), is told that she has salamander blinks. My friend (also named Veronica, oddly enough) has also been told that she’s a slow winker and blinker—which gets her confused for a slow thinker.

All three of us are proud of our large, brown doe eyes. They’re sparkly and beautiful and many women would kill for them. But all three of us have to sporadically put up with awkward conversations about our unusual eye habits. Or how when we glance to the side, our eyes seemingly go completely white and we look dead. Or how with the wrong makeup, we look almost alien because or eyes take up two-thirds of our faces.

It doesn’t take much to accidentally convey the wrong emotion when you have large eyes, either. Surprise easily looks like shock. Happiness can appear demented. Anger just looks hilarious. And a little sadness looks like suicidal depression. Sometimes, I really wish I could constantly wear sunglasses at work because when you have two round billboards on your forehead, a poker face just isn’t possible.

I wouldn’t change my big eyes, though. They’re uniquely me and I adore them. Even if they occasionally attract uncouth reactions from time to time.