For the first twelve years of my life, I saw the world as an unfocused blur, and for the first seven of those years, it didn’t occur to me that everyone else didn’t see things the exact same way. (It occurs to me, however, that there is some life-lesson metaphor in here somewhere, but I’m way too shallow to explore it.)
I remember the first time I found out that things weren’t exactly an even score on the visual front. (This has to be the cleverest pun I’ve come up with yet.) Some chap in the playground was pointing at a teacher on the far side, and even called her by name. I was confused. All I saw was a dark blur, more like a shadow, and I wasn’t afraid to say so. He turned to me and said solemnly, “Maybe you need glasses, ” and he stalked off. I looked at his rapidly blurring back and thought, you’re the one who needs glasses. Idiot.
I mean. I had tried my elder sister’s glasses on before and I got a tumble down our precariously curving staircase for my trouble. Never mind that my poor sister moonlighted as a bat, as blind as she was, and still is, bless her dear heart. (There’s another clever pun here. Am I on a roll or what?)
But the seed was planted. I realized that things tended to look sharper when I squinted. I was astonished to see that trees, which were originally green clouds on brown posts to me, seemed to condense before my squinted eyes and magically form leaves. This was the height of sorcery to me.
I began to make I-Need-Glasses noises to my mother. For about three years, she wasn’t having it: you just want to be like your sister, do you think it’s nice to wear glasses, open your eyes, my friend, and stop squinting like an imbecile.
On and on it went, until my younger sister (who, incidentally, owns my mother) reported that she, too, couldn’t see past her nose. Within the hour, we were whisked to the family ophthalmologist and picking out frames. I was beside myself with happiness, I can’t even tell you, because, asides from the added perk of lucid sight and therefore, unscarred shins, wearing glasses was, well, cool. I can never forget the first week with my glasses. I was much more intelligent, funnier, and yes, prettier. I heard better. I ate better. But as time went on, the clear picture began to form. (Pun number three. This is who I am now.)
Yes, it’s cool. It’s the deep freeze of accessories. You can have a thousand and one frames to match your moods and hairstyles. You can perfect the forbidding ‘over the glasses’ look (it’s so handy, really). You have something to chew on while you try to appear intelligent in meetings. All these things are nice enough but what nobody will tell you is that they’re horribly counterbalanced by a set of challenges I like to refer to as Bespectacled People’s Problems. They are legion, but off the top of my head, here are a few:
1. The panicked grope for your glasses right after you’ve opened your eyes in the morning to see a filmy blur. Does the fear that you’ve finally gone blind ever go away?
2. The permanent crick in your neck from having to look through your glasses in ALL directions. That’s right. No casual swivel of eyeballs left, right, up, down. Your entire head must follow.
3. The constant, ever-intensifying pain at the back of your ears that is the root cause of all other problems in your life – headaches, period pains, heartbreaks, irate landladies, name it.
4. The stamped-on indentations on the bridge of your nose. Congratulations. You now have animal markings.
5. The fact that a mirror in the shower is absolutely wasted on you. While others act out bath-gel commercials every morning and evening, you have to be stuck between peering sullenly into the blurry glass and furiously washing the soap out of your (scrunched-up) eyes.
6. Rainy days should be happy days,. But no. Not for we Cyclops Nation citizens. Forget about vision if you’re bespectacled and walking in the rain. You can only rely on your God and the kindness of strangers to get you across the road, if you’re certain about not becoming a human meatpie.
This is the dark side behind the glamour, behind the lenses. It’s not all sunshine and hitching rose-colored spectacles on your nose. This is the nitty gritty, the price to pay for seeing the world clearly. Fair? I think not, but here we are.
amandarylee's Blog 