So I need glasses. This is something I should have seen coming but age has blindsided me while I wasn’t looking and I think you smell what I’m saying here. For most of my life I’ve taken pride in having 20/20 or better vision even while a lot of my friends had glasses, although there was a time in first grade when that had me feeling left out and I told my mother I thought I might need glasses, but she talked me out of it. Then in second grade my teacher thought maybe I was having trouble seeing the blackboard when the truth is I’d just decided math was stupid and boring and I wasn’t going to do it anymore, but that still earned me a trip to an optometrist who freaked me out by wanting to put eyedrops in my eyes. I didn’t want anything in my eyes, even if it was just a liquid, and it didn’t help when he told me it was just saltwater like tears or the ocean. I knew enough biology to know that tears come out of the corners of your eyes and that the ocean is full of plankton and sand and various bodily fluids. After that I was happy to not need any eyewear aside from goggles I wore for swimming, especially in the ocean, although there were times when I wished that, like the horned lizard, I could squirt blood out of my eyes as a defense mechanism for dealing with school bullies since I could only use the “You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses” line while standing behind one of my friends. In the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Forward March Hare” Bugs is given an eye exam and freaks out the doctor by reading the tiny print at the bottom of the eye chart, and I thought this was hilarious so I freaked out my family doctor by doing the same thing during a checkup, although I’d actually gotten up close and read it while he was out of the room.
In high school I took an advanced biology class and when we did the chapter on the eye I found it really fascinating, especially how the images that are projected onto our eye are upside down but our brain turns them around so we see right-side up, and I said, “So when I’ve got my head upside down why doesn’t my brain turn that image around?” and the teacher told me to get my head off the floor and sit up straight in my seat and not put my feet up in the air. And we were supposed to dissect cow eyes but for some reason the teacher wasn’t able to get them that year which was disappointing because I was also taking a film studies class and was looking forward to recreating the opening scene of Un Chien Andalou, but that’s another story.
Anyway things started well enough at my latest optometrist appointment when an assistant asked me, “Can I dilate you?” and I said, “How about dinner and a movie first?” Actually getting my eyes dilated is my favorite part of any eye appointment because it doesn’t take much and I once had a late afternoon appointment and went out to dinner afterward and spent most of the evening playing with the candle on our table. Then the assistant said, “Read the smallest line of the chart you can make out,” and I said “What chart?” The good news is that I was facing the wrong direction but the bad news is even the largest line of the chart was blurry to me. I tried to fake my way through it but I’m pretty sure I gave the game away when I said, “E, G, M, mushroom, Oscar Wilde, ampersand, upside-down E.”
Then the doctor came in and started talking about giving me a prescription and I said, “For some pills or something?” She explained that I needed progressive lenses. I said, “Well I wouldn’t want any lenses that weren’t cool with equality and social justice.” And then I realized what she was saying and I’m pretty sure I started bleeding a little from my eyes and I said, “Wow, doc, you really know how to hit a guy with glasses.”
I’ve needed glasses since I was 10. This was hilarious. Welcome to the club.
I’m kind of happy to finally be joining the club–legitimately, anyway. I’ve worn glasses on several Halloweens, depending on the costume, and always thought I looked smarter in them. Contacts, on the other hand, I will never try. Unless maybe they’re those Halloween contacts.
Hahaha! I dig the way you think, Chris; it’s like you’re upside down in class every day looking at the world through a cold-filtered lens. 😉
“Progressive.” ???
I went to the doctor myself, yesterday, for the first time in ages (wrote about how long ago yesterday, to my millions of fans 😉 ), and got a clean bill of health. It was a good experience and I dropped some jokes and had some laughs with two assistants, one nurse, and the doc. By the end of it I asked my new primary if I should cut back on the drinking and red meat and get some more exercise and, to my incredible surprise, he said “nah, you’re doing fine.” ?
Now my wife wants to kill him. ?
As for my eyes, contacts since I was 15. That was 3 1/2 decades ago. Not the same ones, mind you, I changed them in ’98. 🙂
Have a great 3/2 buddy. You will, literally, see the world in a whole new way, today. ?
I’m glad to hear about your clean bill of health and that in spite of your wife’s chagrin you don’t have to give up any of the things that make life worth living. That kind of reminds me of the joke about the doctor telling a woman, “If you don’t take good care of your husband and satisfy his every whim he’ll die in six months.” Later the husband asks his wife, “What’d the doctor say?” And she replies, “You’ve got six months to live.”
And it’s admirable you wear contacts. I’m not sure I could deal with sticking anything in my eye.
Better than having racist glasses, I guess.
Having grown up in the South I’ve seen enough through the racist perspective. Definitely progressive lenses for me.
This is hilarious! Having been almost legally blind until laser surgery two years ago, I actually COULDN’T see the chart on the wall. My optometrist would say “what’s the smallest line you can read”, and then we would both laugh. Now, of course, I have super-vision. And thanks for the Dali/Bunuel reference–that eyeball scene gave me nightmares!
I very kindly didn’t link to the Dali/Bunuel scene because I figure most people have seen it and those who haven’t seen it neither want nor need to see it. Anyway congratulations on your super-vision. I’m sure it helps out at work if you ever need to super-vise.
OMG. I’ve worn glasses since 3rd grade.
Fortunately, by the time I needed progressive lenses, they had the lineless kind, so it’s not obvious. Also, it’s pretty mild.
Welcome to my world!
I’m glad to be part of your world. Okay, I’m a little down that my long streak of perfect vision has finally been broken, but I think I’d look smarter in glasses so I’m happy to get some.
I love the way you look at things, Chris.
As I’ve said before and will hopefully say many more times I always appreciate the fresh perspective you bring.
Glasses since 2nd grade. Contacts since 9th grade. Detached retina when I was 46. Eye have had no shortage of eye issues.
Egad. The eyes really have it there. I plan to go with glasses but I admire anyone who wears contacts. I don’t think I could start the day with putting something in my eye.