Category: Harry Potter

I have worn glasses since the 2nd Grade. The story goes that I was always sitting extremely close to the television which, in those days of cave men and velociraptors, meant I was subject to Hard Radiation that would make my hair fall out.

My mother, not wanting such a fate for her firstborn, kept chiding me to get back from the TV. But, inevitably, I would scoot right back up to it.

Finally she thought to ask the obvious-only-in-retrospect question. “Why do you always sit so close to the TV?”

And I gave the obvious answer, which only I could realize and yet could not realize was odd. “Because I can’t see from back there.”

Enter the Optometrist.

I can recall getting glasses shortly before we moved from Mountain View down t Diamond Bar, because I know I had them on the house on Montalto Drive, as I complained about the strange distortion they provided as I swung my head back and forth.

And I’ve worn glasses ever since.

On occasion someone will suggest contact lenses. To which I note that the idea of actually placing objects onto my eyeball on a daily basis is matched in its visceral gruesomeness only by the idea of letting someone shave my cornea with a laser beam.

And so I continue to wear glasses. And they’ve always been glass, until the current pair. Long, long ago I became enamored of PhotoGrey lenses, which magically change shade in the presence of light (of UV, actually, and they react even more strongly in cold weather). Hey presto, no sunglasses needed. I’ve always shaken my head at the poor Nats who need to keep sunglasses somewhere handy but never seem to have them, or the strange people who, for unknown reasons, bought prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses.

Well, as of my last visit, three-odd years ago, I was told that PhotoGrey (or whatever TM it was) is now available on plastic. And since everyone for eons had been chivvying me about getting plastic lenses (“How can you stand that weight?” “Well, when you’ve been wearing them since the 2nd Grade, you get strong nose muscles …”) I went ahead and got them.

The fact that the glasses shop at Kaiser no longer does their glass in-house, but that there would be a multi-week delay in getting them, made no difference to me, of course.

Hate the plastic, by the way. Yeah, it’s light. It also gets scratches. I never used to get scratches on the glass, or only a few. I’ve finally had to go in to get my glasses replaced, not because of failing vision, but because of scratched plastic.

I suspect I’ll end up with plastic again, though. Probably there’s an extra $50 copay for glass.

Anyway, went in for an eye exam earlier in the week. All’s well, no substantive change in my near-sightedness, my astigmatism, or my prism. I remain legally blind and great fun to have at parties when the bigger kids still my specs …

I went in this afternoon to look in the glasses shop at the Arapahoe Kaiser clinic.

Okay, now I like round glasses. By round glasses, I mean completely round. My favorite set ever was pretty much exactly round — part of the “John Lennon Collection” (of whatever company had that license at the time). Anyway, I think those look best on me.

Now, you would think that with the newfound popularity of round frames (think “Harry Potter”) there would be a wide variety available, right?

Bzzzzzt.

I can get round, or roundish, or oval frames. If I don’t mind them the size of quarters. Yeah, that will be helpful. I sort of like my glasses to, I don’t know, actually cover my eyes.

Everything is small. Small and flat. Small and round. Or big and unfashionable.

As usual, my aesthetic is out of sync with the masses. Feh.

So I didn’t buy any. I’ll drag Margie back with me, to get her opinion.

*Sigh*