Four Eyes

I’ve been wearing glasses for just about my entire life. While I don’t recall the exact first time I donned them, I do remember visiting the optometrist when I was very young; at least, the one we had in Portland after we moved down from Bangor. His office was in the heart of the city, which meant it was a something of an adventure for us to go. I’m not entirely certain my mother felt quite the same, considering she had to herd my brother and I to the appointment; still, I remember parking in a small lot beside one of the grand old department stores that was still in residence at that point, and then crossing (what seemed to me to be) very busy streets to get to the building in question.

One of the signature features that I remember vibrantly is that the elevator was still manually operated; young me was enamored with the fact that someone actually had to be stationed inside the carriage all day in order to make the thing work. I’m pretty certain I thought I had discovered my life’s vocation at that point, though it became rather clear a year two later that more modern elevators would find even Portland by the late 1970s. It was also my first lesson in how automation can have a dramatic impact on humans — something I’ll delve into later.

Wearing glasses in elementary school was a hit or miss thing; mostly miss, for I generally despised having to wear them. It was the late 1970s and early 1980s, which meant they were big, bulky and generally pretty damn ugly — even for a kid who otherwise had no cares about fashion. I sat up front in most of my classes anyway due to alpha split most teachers did, so seeing the chalkboard wasn’t an issue (and yes, in those days they were still chalk). And as a swimmer, I couldn’t wear them into the pool, either, so in the end, they usually wound up sitting on my bureau at home.

By Junior High School, though, even I had to admit that seeing the real world had become a bit of a problem; the glasses came back out of hiding, but as active as I was at that point (swimming, camping and hiking as a Boy Scout, working), they remained something of a nuisance. There wasn’t anything worse than pushing a lawnmower across an expanse of grass in the heat of the summer while constantly pushing the damn things back up onto the bridge of your nose.

So yeah, not a fan of glasses.

The summer I was heading into eighth grade changed a few things for me. That was the year that the far younger optometrist we’d begun to see after the original one retired made a startling recommendation during my annual visit. Unbeknownst to me, contact lenses were becoming more widely prescribed for teenagers and (clearly reading my inner angst), my doctor asked if I’d be interested in trying them out. I initially said no; my great aunt had worn the gas permeable kind (aka so-called “hard” lenses) and based on her experience, I’d assumed they’d be truly uncomfortable. (In fairness, she’d never actually told me that.)

My doctor, to his credit, persisted, and after we ran the numbers (and I agreed to use some of my money from my part-time work to pay for then), I found myself back in his office a few weeks later learning how to put them in. It was a predictably long appointment, for initially, there was absolutely no way I could force myself to keep my eyelids open long enough to stuff that lens onto my eye. I figured it out eventually, though, and today popping them in and out is nearly second nature.

I hasten to add I have never mistreated my lenses (or my eyes) as badly as either Vasily or Sean; about the worst thing I’ve ever done is sleep in them while traveling, and on those extremely rare occasions I’ve usually paid for it with a blepharitis flare up. Still, I can’t conceive of a time when I won’t be able to wear them; it’s not really a vanity thing so much as an ease-of-life thing. I hate having the world framed by my glasses and far prefer the HD version my contacts provide, though as of late I’ve had to change to a bifocal-type of lens that lets me read the computer or, heavens, an actual novel.

Maybe, someday, a special drop will be made that will give me perfect 20/20 vision for days on end. But until then… contacts are the way to go.