hard contacts vs soft contacts

Yesterday when I was playing pickup, a rebound deflected off of an arm and hit me in the eye. I was wearing hard contacts due to some dry eye issues, so it hurt more than usual, and my left contact popped out and fell on the ground. I yelled at everyone to stop moving, picked it up, rinsed it off in the water fountain, and popped it back in.

To me, that incident perfectly illustrates the pros and cons of hard contacts. It hurts pretty bad when you get hit in the eye. Also, if you step on one, it's done. On the bright side, you can use plain water to rinse them, and you don't have to worry about them drying out your eyes.

Actually, there are a couple additional downsides. Hard contacts are less comfortable in general, since you can kind of feel them in your eye all day. If you ever get a speck of dirt in your eye while wearing hard contacts, it'll hurt like hell. Plus, no one has made disposable hard contacts yet, so there's all that cleaning overhead and worrying about losing them.

I've been switching back and forth depending on how dry my eyes are in a given week.