10 June 1997

I like glasses, on me and on others. The idea of putting little bits of plastic into my tender eyes kind of squicks me, and the troubles I've seen people have (contacts irritating eyes to the point of great pain, people dropping a contact in a bathroom full of little puddles of water, dropping a contact into a nearly-full trash can, etc.) only add weight to my resolution. But most of the guys I've ever drooled over in person have worn glasses. And I'm not alone in this preference. (Men do too make passes at girl who wear glasses!)

I've gotten new glasses since most of the pictures of me on this web site were taken. But unfortunately I'm still having to wear my old ones.

I like my old glasses, even if the frames are big and take up much of my face. I can see in them! I have distance vision and even some peripheral vision in them. The only reason I am replacing this old pair is that the lenses are scratched and the frames are getting bent. But I've worn these frames for nearly six years, and the lenses are even older, about eight years. Meaning I've worn these lenses for half the time I've worn glasses at all. (And that I've been looking through these lenses for one-third of my lifetime.)

But hey, variety is the spice of life. Finding it necessary to get a new pair, I chose thinner, metal frames, and some lenses advertised as both thinner and more scratch-resistant than the plain plastic of my old ones. Seemed like a good idea at the time, and the people at the optical place didn't mention anything problematic about wearing them.

I went back the next day to get them, since even one-hour delivery is awkward if you come in just before closing. Put them on. Thought everything was awfully blurry. I mean, I could see straight ahead. But not as far as I should be able to, not as far as I could in my old lenses, before everything got blurry. And anything slightly off to the side was definitely blurry, even when it wasn't that far away. But well, it was the first time I'd gotten this kind of lens, the first time I'd worn metal frames with nose pads instead of plastic frames that just sit on your nose directly. And my prescription had changed, though not drastically or I wouldn't have lasted this long in the old ones. So I figured I'd give them a try.

I lasted about two hours in them. The blurriness didn't go away for distance or peripheral vision, and it was downright nauseating to turn my head. I finally took them off while in Target, because I was starting to panic -- I was in a public place, my friend and ride Jon was somewhere else in the store, and I couldn't see! This tripped all the vulnerable and scared switches in my head, and I wasn't going to take that when I had an alternative. I put the old ones back on and wore them the rest of the night. Jon told me that he had had trouble with fancy polycarbonate plastic lenses too. And since Jon is about the only person I know personally with worse uncorrected vision than I have, I thought I might be having the same problem.

I gave the new ones another try, the next morning, figuring maybe putting them on first thing in the morning would make it easier to adapt to them. I wore them about three minutes before I tripped on my own stairs -- I was looking directly down at my feet and could have sworn there was another step there! Turned out there wasn't, and I landed on my hands and knees on the floor. I went back upstairs and got out the old glasses, and will keep wearing them until I have a chance to go back and take advantage of my 30-day guarantee.

14 June 1997

Well, I went back. Thank God for 30-day guarantees! (This is all at a LensCrafters, if you're interested.) I explained my problem with the glasses and they replaced the lenses with new ones made from a different kind of plastic -- still supposedly lighter than standard plastic, but not supposed to mess with people's sight. I still think they should have warned me if it was known that some people had problems with the polycarbonate lenses, but all that seems wiped away by the fact that it was no trouble at all to get free new lenses which I can see through now! I've been wearing the new glasses for more than two days now, and though I am still having trouble getting used to nose pads and the way these glasses sit, at least I can see!

So anyway, this is the saga of my new glasses. I hope I won't need to go through anything like this again for a long, long time. Of course, that assumes I don't decide to spend money on prescription sunglasses anytime soon....

Home | Writing | Bio | Resources & Bibliographies | Links

eXTReMe Tracker