A Lack of Vision

In third grade I was sitting in the back of the classroom next to Valerie Luckewicz who pointed out something that was written on the board. I looked at her, turned and squinted at the board, and then looked at her again.

"Wait, you can see that from here?" I asked.

"Want to try my glasses?" she asked, and she started to take them off and hand them to me.

I took the glasses and started to very skeptically put them on while saying, "I don't think other people's glasses are supposed to work on...hey, wait a minute. I can see everything now!"

And so it began. My never-ending journey through glasses then contacts, then different types of contacts, and  newer pairs of glasses, and then finally, the beginning of the end: reading glasses. There's a sort of irony in not being able to see into the distance so poorly that you eventually can't see close up -- even close up becomes too distant. I know, I know. Farsighted and nearsighted are two different things. As we age we all need reading glasses. But if I can't see far, and I can't see near, what the heck is left?

I've been going through a rather intensive dance of the vision corrective devices for a couple of years now. Monofocal, bifocal, what-the-focal. My astigmatism can astick it up my, ahem. Anyway, I'm tired of the whole which-is-clearer-1-or-2 experience. I'm tired of the wetting solutions, the cleaning solutions, the scratch-free, glare-resistant, transition, tinted, slanted, glassy, plastic choices that I keep buying while still wishing that I could just wake up and SEE.

I'm not a candidate for laser surgery, though I may be too chicken for it even if I were. So instead, I now have the following eye apparatus: glasses for distance, reading glasses for my naked eyes, reading glasses for my contact-lensed eyes, contact lenses for distance. I feel like I'm always taking devices off and putting devices on, and blinking and focusing. There's no way that all of this can be helping my ongoing stress-induced eye-twitch.

But instead of complaining, I should probably be thankful. What if I lived during Little House on the Prairie times? (I loved that show when I was a little girl!) I would probably have had to wear 100-pound magnifying glasses strapped onto my head, and those would have only lasted until I was about 12 at which time I would have accidentally stepped into a mountain lion's den and been eaten because I couldn't see where I was going.

Yes, I'll stop complaining now and get ready to enjoy the upcoming summer break.I'll just grab my floppy hat and my prescription sunglasses and be on my way.