I broke my glasses the other night. Not the glass part, mind you. The glass is thicker than the bottom of an old fashioned soda bottle and I think you would have to drive a car over the lens to break it, but the metal that holds the two lenses together broke, then one of the lenses fell out, to boot. My field of vision is five inches, so it was kind of trial and error while I was looking for them but now I'm wearing my old, old glasses where each lens is somewhere near the size of a tuna can and about that heavy on my nose.
The ones I broke had gotten kinky-wampus. I went up to the glasses place in the mall where I originally got them and asked to have them adjusted. The lady took little pliers, twisted them back and forth and sideways and they were much better. That was on Thursday and they broke on Friday night and I really think she had gotten them almost to the breaking point when she twisted, then I finished them off just by moving them up to the top of my head. I can't blame her, though.They were at least eight years old and probably would have gone some time soon anyway. Being eight years old, that style is discontinued so you can't just put old lenses in new frames. I think there is something against that in the Bible anyway: new wine in old bottles or something. I may be stretching my theology.
I got my first pair of glasses when I was ten years old----no, not fitted for me by Benjamin Franklin!----and I'll never forget how shocked I was to look out the window of the doctor's office and see individual bricks on the wall of the building across the parking lot. And there were lots of leaves on the trees, each one separate! I don't know how my parents decided that I should have my eyes checked, probably I failed a test at the school nurse's office, but after that I could see all kinds of things. Those glasses were robin's egg blue and shaped like cat-eyes. A mixed metaphor but very fashionable....I thought. Plus the lenses magnified the fact that my eyelashes, to go with my red hair, were almost colorless. But I didn't care what people were seeing when they looked at me. I could see them!
A few years later I got my first contact lenses. Contacts really weren't perfected then, I guess, and it didn't take me long to get an infection, go to the E.R. in the middle of the night and have to wear patches over my eyes for a couple of days, so that didn't last too long. Later, after Dennis and I were married, I tried contacts again and wore them for probably twenty years. They created bonding in our marriage. I would drop one; Dennis would have to stop everything to find it for me. I would plug the sink up and leave the water in there to keep them from going down the drain; we would have to have negotiations to trade bad habits. I even lost one in my eye occasionally and Dennis would calm me down till it worked it's way around. But, then, another eye infection happened and contacts made way for glasses once again.
Being nearsighted has it's advantages. I can't even see the big E on the eye chart so since I don't wear my glasses in the shower and I can't really see the soap scum or whatever is growing in there, it can't be my fault if it's never sparkly clean, can it? Sometimes the frames of my glasses go right over my eyebrows, so if I don't pluck my eyebrows consistently, who knows? I can't see what's going on up there anyway. And get this: at Christmas, if I take off my glasses and look at the Christmas tree, the lights have a beautiful, soft glow with halos around them that I don't think anybody else gets to see. I will let you borrow my glasses sometime and you can try it in reverse, but I don't think you will get as good an effect as I do.
Yes, I know that being myopic is so last century! Everybody gets Lasik or it's equivalent these days, but I think I've reached the age where I'll stick with what I know. I used to think that when I started to get far-sighted my near-sightedness would merge with my far-sightedness and I might actually see clearly without glasses for an hour, but, if it happened, I missed it. I think if I didn't have glasses on my face my head would be out of balance and I would fall forward.
Of course, when I got about five inches from the floor I would see it coming at me just fine.
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