Through the Looking Glass- Part One

I have been wearing glasses of some sort since I was in the 3rd grade. I found a single picture of my first pair of glasses. I thought they were terribly cool, of course. They were this weird iridescent color so they would be pink, and then blue and so on as I moved my head. They also had Pink Panther heads on the sides. Now this would have been fine, except for the fact that I had a lazy eye. So, in addition to these super cool glasses, I also was lucky enough to wear an eye patch. (Luckily it appears to be missing from the picture) This did not help me in the popularity department, as you might imagine. It might also explain in part why I was such a bully. I only wore the stupid thing for the school year. Aside from my father calling me “Ace”, that’s about all I can recall about that first pair.

Sally Jesse is a wannabe
I quit wearing my glasses after that year too. Not really sure why aside from the “uncool” factor. I don’t believe I had another pair until I hit high school. Ah, the 80’s. Now for this, I do have pictures. Lots of them. For some reason, and maybe it was just the fashion at the time, my glasses seemed to take up half of my face. Giant hoot-owl things. I hated having to wear them. Finally, my senior year of high school I was able to buy my first pair of contacts. I was overjoyed. My vanity was alive and well and headed to college.

The Pink Panther Returns?
I went through that phase where I wouldn’t leave my room unless I had my contacts in. Suddenly my less than perfect vision had become some sort of dirty little secret. Eventually, I switched from my daily wear contacts to disposables since they didn’t require as much maintenance. They were fantastic. Until I started to travel for work. Then even they became a nuisance. I know I have gone on and on about air travel already, but I learned pretty quickly that it is better to be comfortable than fashionable on the airplane. That meant glasses instead of contacts. Vanity bedamned. After awhile, it just became easier to travel without them altogether. Once I moved to the desert, I gave up completely. Between the dry air in the airplane and the dry air in the desert, I was tired of sticking my fingers into my already tired, dry eyes and scraping the contacts off of them. But, I was also not loving the fact that I was giving up all of my cool sunglasses for a creepy, nerdy clip-on pair for my glasses. I could not slide backward into that world. Yuck. So, on to the next option- surgery.