Look Out!

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was eight. Sister “Someone-Or-Another” discovered that I had problems seeing the blackboard in second grade, and sent me home with a note from the school nurse with a word that I didn’t understand:

“Myopic”.

I hid the note from my mom for a couple of days, but eventually I was dragged kicking and screaming to the eye doctor and I’ve been wearing glasses ever since.

Sure, I had my brief love affair with contacts, but like most relationships when you’re young, love hurts.

The contacts scratched my cornea, but I refused to give them up. The day-to-day maintenance in the bad old days (back in the mid 1980’s) was incredible, and costly to boot.

Enter the astigmatism, and here were my choices: hard contacts, something called “Boston gas lenses”, or, glasses.

Distance glasses, reading glasses, bifocals (oops, I meant to say “multi-visions”)…it’s a family affair. I don’t believe there’s anyone in my family who doesn’t need some sort of optical enhancement, and now that I think about it, we’re all blind as bats!

There was never a holiday dinner, barbecue, wedding, football game or any other little slice of life where someone didn’t say the following:

“Wait a second. I’ve got to get my glasses.”
“No, I need my readers.”
“Nope, new bifocals. Oh, there it is!”
“Whose glasses are these?”

So, I’m not getting old, you see…I’m just following a family tradition.