End of an Era

When I was in the second grade, I got my first pair of glasses. They were large, lavender, acrylic, and round. That puts me at about 8 years old.

First day of 3rd grade. Check out those absolutely, perfectly proportional specs on that cutie.

Looks to be later that year on the good ol' birthday. Still giant round glasses.

First day of 4th grade. Jeez louise, THEY ARE BIGGER THAN MY FACE.

Middle school now I think. With the same taste in gigantic glasses. Was it the 80's or something? Wow.

Oh look! It's the 90's and I still have lavender, huge, round glasses!

My 14th birthday, with a monkey bread cake (mmm...it burns so good)
AND... curly hair... AND... the last set before the onset of contacts.

I had glasses for 17 years. Like most kids, I broke my fair share. In the 5th grade, I recall a boy named Jimmy nailing me in the face with a dodge ball (on accident) and my glasses broke. I cried and called him a bitch. He picked up my glasses, gave me a goofy but wary smile and called me a bitch back. And then we both laughed.

I wonder what ever happened to Jimmy. He really was a nice kid.

When I finally got specially made contact lenses (gas permeable, anybody? Anybody?), I felt like a new woman. I recall walking into Spanish class one day, and this cute sophomore guy who never even acknowledged me kept staring at me and finally told me that I looked so nice without my glasses.

I know he meant well; he wasn't one of the local bullies at all. But, as you can imagine, a 14 year old coming into puberty and incoming 25 year war with depression, the statement both made me feel beautiful and ugly at the same time. I was Superman and Laney Boggs combined: dowdy, ugly girl with the glasses one moment, gorgeous super awesome freshman the next.

Truth: I HATED those lenses. They were little hard discs of pain that I was determined to wear because I'd be damned if I walked into school with *GASP* my glasses on. I needed them for sports! (BWAHAHAHAHA.... sports... that's a whole other series of posts where I detail how not athletically inclined I am... Thank goodness Dave is, and G got that part of him. Anyway.)

Eventually, after some crack optometrist decided to "regrind" them to a new prescription and the residual, microscopic barbs scratched my corneas, we made the switch to thick, soft contact lenses. They were weighted on one side so they would sit properly on my eyeball to help with my astigmatism.

However, my chosen vocation of geologist was not kind to contact lenses. I worked in dusty environments and handled hazardous materials, so back to glasses I went.

Until the advent of Lasik.

2003. My sister got the procedure done, and lo: no more glasses. For someone who couldn't even see the number on her alarm clock (do people still use those? Here's a picture below for you youngin's) from bed, this sounded incredible. Alas, as a poor grad student, I couldn't afford it, and I wouldn't let my parents pay for it. I finally agreed to at least let them lend me the money that I would pay back (and it took several years, as my husband so fondly recalls..., and yes, my parents are awesome).

This is called an alarm clock, a device you used to use in order to tell time and wake you up when needed.
Now go give some love to your smartphone if you've got one.
(source)

So I did it. I ... I can't properly express my feelings when I finally could see without my glasses or contacts. It was incredibly emotional. To go from absolutely useless without glasses or contacts to being completely independent of them was freeing. Sometimes I had to close my eyes because actually seeing so crisply all the time taxed my eyes.

Eventually, my life proceeded after Lasik and I loved it. My correction was not perfect (I was 20/35), but I could drive and see and wear any sunglasses I wanted. It was amazing. To this day, 15 years later, I'm still legal to drive. While I know that regularly seeing an eye doctor is important to one's health, I will admit here that once I was done I was all like SEE YA FUCKERS! Excepting a trip back in 2008 to be convinced that the spider bite on my eyelid was not, in fact, necrotizing fasciitis, I haven't seen an eye doctor at all.

But oh... 40. Thou art a cruel age, for thine takeneth my reading sight. (Or so I thought.)

And the readers at the store? Don't work very well because my eyeballs have different needs, and I've already posted a lovely pic on my single lens adaptation. Let's see it again, shall we?

Despite being proportional, the lack of a lens slides me back into dorkdom. Again.

So lovely.

I went to the optometrist and, as it turns out, I don't need reading glasses. I also don't technically need glasses to see things far away either (20/30 ROCK ON).

Nope, I need glasses to see in the middle. Like my computer, which is what I've been struggling with. Turns out progressive glasses are a real thing for people who have trouble seeing in the middle. Middle sighted? Yep, part of Computer Vision Syndrome. My eyes are otherwise absolutely healthy. I'm 20/20 for close ups, which makes sense because I didn't understand why I could read things perfectly at Target when shopping for reading glasses but not my computer at home. My middle vision is 20/40, just enough to be obnoxious.

No reading glasses! But I do need my computer ones, my trifocal progressive darlings (holy shit these things got expensive and I'm so sorry Mom and Dad for always breaking mine).

Note to self: start getting vision insurance.

Also note to self: you are absolutely adorbs in these new frames.

After over two decades, I got at least the size right.