No glasses for me.
October 25, 2006Did any of you grow up in the New York/Connecticut/New Jersey tri-state area and if you did, do you remember the “Get glasses, Alice” commercial? In which a woman walks into walls and throws herself down the stairs and trips over the dog, and all her husband can say is, “Get glasses, Alice”? And he says it over and over again? And then she obediently hops over to her local vision center and gets glasses and her husband says something asinine like, “Alice, you got glasses!” and instead of shooting him in the head, she just smiles? This commercial was on when I was in junior high. Imagine what everyone said whenever I tripped or fell or walked into things. Imagine that I tripped and walked into things pretty much every day. That commercial is BURNED INTO MY BRAIN.
My vision has always been just fine, which annoyed me, since I badly wanted glasses. In first grade I wore my sister’s glasses to school for a full week, stumbling around and pretending that at last, I could see. I don't know if this was because I wanted glasses or because I wanted to be my sister, who was ten years older and thus, the coolest being who ever walked the earth. I’m surprised I didn’t wear her bra to school the following week, exulting that finally my breasts were getting the support they needed.
I went to the eye doctor a couple of weeks ago because my eyes have stopped functioning. Within a few minutes of focusing on a computer screen or looking at paper with words on it, they simply give up. If I fight them back into focus, they tear violently, as if my computer were composed of onions. So now that my eyes were falling apart, all I could think was, all right! It’s glasses time for me!
Except no! Damn it, my vision is still breathtakingly perfect. I have fatigued my eyes to the point of total collapse, is all. All I have to do is stay far away from the computer until such time as I absolutely have to use it. (The optometrist did give me a prescription for reading glasses, but I got the distinct impression that he was handing me a pretend prescription so that I would feel like a grown up and get out of there.)
The problem is, I need to use the computer all the time. I have tried not to look at the screen, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. In fact right now my eyes are closed! You’re amazed at this, but it’s the truth. Now they’re open, but I’m looking out the window. No one’s out there. Where does everyone go? I bet they all have jobs. Those jerks.
I need some way to wrap this up, so let’s pretend there’s a tidy concluding paragraph here, instead of this. I have to go remove my eyes with a grapefruit spoon and immerse them in a bowl of chilled rainwater.
Reader Comments (58)
Gah! I am such a dork.
I have glasses---my eyesight is slowly receding---I look dorky 9/10 of the time. Nothing to be jealous of here.
Perhaps a melon baller would be better for eyeball removal?
Either that or an ergonometric (is that right? No. ergonomic.) evaluation of your workstation. My screen is about 3 feet from my face. Maybe 4. And I have to say, it really helps. There are guidelines out there somewhere...Ahh, here's where I saw them.http://www.macworld.com/2006/10/features/ergo_workspace/index.php?lsrc=mwtoprss
For me, the trick is to use the lowest power I can get away with. Higher-power reading glasses make my eyes more and more far-sighted (and the higher power, the closer to the screen you have to sit.) Right now I'm using 1.25.
Dry eye could also be a factor.
Hope your eyes feel better soon! Good luck!
I hope your eyes feel better.
I've worn glasses since 4th grade... they're OK. You do have the annoyance of them fogging up when you come inside from the cold (no amount of cleaning will help). And your child wanting to play with them (and flex frames being outrageously expensive). And lenses that pop out. And frames breaking when you are 6 months pregnant and then you have to worry about whether the hormones changed your prescription so you'll have to shell out twice in ten months, but you need glasses because your old ones are REALLY old and make your head hurt... shall I continue? %)
I truly thought I was the only person in the world who *wanted* glasses but did not need them. In grad school, after reading several thousand pages per week, I finally did need glasses--just barely. I was so happy the day I got them. My fiance-now-husband, who is practically legally blind, put them on and just laughed. He said there couldn't be a prescription in those lenses. And you know what? Just a few scant years after completing the M.A. in eyestrain, my perfect vision was back. I no longer need glasses--again. Still, I keep them around when I want to look smart, which, in Montana, is pretty much never.
I wonder if this is one of those "curly-haired-people want straight hair, and straight-haired-people want curly hair" things. I never knew so many people wanted glasses...
Regardless. I hope your eyes are feeling better soon!
Maybe you can get one of those screen filters, so your eyes won't get so tired. They're not very expensive and you can find them online...or maybe you should just go to the store and not look at the computer anymore. I shouldn't be enabling...sorry.
And then? At age 40? It became hard to read the instructions on the infant tylenol and I worried about overdosing my child (or? underdosing her and not getting any sleep).
So I got glasses.
Exactly two minutes after I got them, I was so freaking dependent upon them I couldn't read the BILLBOARDS on the highway. OK, I exaggerate. It was three minutes and the billboards were OK but I couldn't read anything else, like the menus in restaurants (and dammit, I'm tired of ordering the chicken club just because it's on every menu - I want to READ again).
Anyway, my point (yes, I do have one) is that having a DEPENDENCY on glasses sucks. I'd much rather prefer the grapefruit spoon and chilled water route...