About a year ago, I lamented in a column about changes in my eyesight. I had started to notice trouble with reading small print and wondered if I needed bifocals.
Luckily, I have escaped that fate, but I did something very overdue a couple of weeks ago. I went and bought new glasses.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought a pair of specs. I have a pair I would wear around the house – and around town when I didn’t feel like wearing my contacts – but they had the trifecta of an out-of-date prescription, an unflattering look and hopelessly scratched lenses.
I really wonder how I didn’t hurt myself or someone else wearing these things.
I got a new prescription earlier this year, but procrastinated on getting new glasses. I don’t care how much I have grown up. I hate wearing glasses. I started wearing them in fourth or fifth grade and the stigma of pre-teen teasing has never really gone away.
Of course, I went out and got new contacts right away. I have worn them pretty much full time since I turned 15 so I always consider them a priority.
Glasses could wait. When my daughter recently found out she needed glasses, I told her she should feel lucky to have a choice of cool frames and styles available.
I didn’t have that luxury as a kid. If I had a choice, it came down to the big ugly black frames versus the big ugly brown frames. I still can’t fully appreciate the hilarity of photos from that era.
I haven’t seen much change over time. I never really felt I could find a pair of glasses I thought looked good. In fact, the thickness of my lenses disqualified many acceptable choices over the years.
But I sucked it up and went to a downtown optometrist to find a new pair of specs. I promised myself I would actually find something that looked good to my wife and I in hopes that I would wear the glasses more often.
For the first time in my life, I got a real explanation for why some kinds of framers just didn’t work for my eyes. That ruled out the rimless frames we both liked. In the end, I paid a premium price for a fairly indestructible pair of frames that actually don’t make me cringe.
I have worn my glasses a bunch of times over the past week or so, diligently cleaning them any time I see even a speck of dust on one of the frames. I want to take better care of them this time around.
The way I see it, as long as I keep them clean and manage to not break them, I don’t ever have to talk to anyone about glasses again and can perpetually put off the question of bifocals.
That is, until I walk into a wall or misread the directions on a food box and ruin dinner one night. Then I might think about maybe making an eye doctor appointment if it happens again.
I actually like how I look in these glasses. I can’t mess this up.