Specs

The other day I went down to Mom's apartment for something. When I walked in, she was sitting in her favorite easy chair, looking at her computer. Her nose was wrinkled into several different directions at once. I asked her what the problem was, and she told me that her glasses needed to be tightened and straightened. Being concerned that her nose not permanently stay in that position (remember when you used to make a face or cross your eyes and your elders would warn that you might freeze in that position?), I agreed to ferry her to the optometrist's office to get the glasses fixed.

We just came back from that little chore, and her glasses are fitting much better. I know we'll be back again - she has plastic frames, and the bridge is a little too big for her face. But it's a close drive, and a few of the employees are casual friends. It's always fun to catch up.

The trip to get the glasses fixed brought back memories of my getting glasses for the first time. I'd been saying for awhile that I thought I needed glasses. Since I'd played with Mom's glasses since I was little, the folks didn't pay much attention. They thought it was just the IDEA of glasses that I liked. In the spring of my 7th grade year, one of the local 4-H clubs sponsored a vision check at school. It wasn't fancy, just a chair in the music room with the perfunctory eye chart placed 20 feet away.  No big deal.

Except - I couldn't see a lot of it. They checked one eye, then the other, and then the two together. And Mom and Dad got a card from them saying it was imperative they take me in for an eye exam. That basic eye check showed me at 20/60 in the right eye and 20/100 in the left eye. Those numbers turned out to be generous.

Not long after summer break started, I went for my first eye exam. At that time, the local optometrist's office was just half a block off the square, in a basement office. The doctor was a really nice man, thorough and gentle - a real change of pace from the dentist we used! The only oddity I ever found in his personality was that he always talked about his product in a two-syllable word. He commented frequently about my needing to get gah-lohsses. As long as I knew him, the word "glasses" was stretched into two syllables. Mom could tell it amused me, and I was admonished to never lose it and laugh in his office. Quite a feat - I wasn't the most "PC" person as a teen!!

I went through several pair of gah-lohsses during junior high, high school, and college. Sometimes a prescription would only last a year before needing to be stronger....when the prescription managed to last two years, then the frames were held together with adhesive tape. I was not a quiet, delicate person.

Even throughout my adult life, I've considered myself lucky if I'm able to keep the same prescription for two years. I'd love to see how much money I've invested in eyeglasses over the years..........or maybe not, it might just be too sad! By my mid-40's I was in bi-focals, and I've now had tri-focals for nearly ten years. There are days I'm still not used to them! I tried contacts once, but I was allergic to the contact solution (even the hypoallergenic solution) and couldn't wear them.

Of course, I have three offspring who have eye issues. Two wear contacts, and the other is fortunate enough to not have to wear glasses all the time. We've gone from the basic plastic frames of my early teen years to the edgy wirerims of the early '70's....to the gigantic oversized glasses of the '80's. Those were a trip - my eyesight was so bad by then that those large lenses gave me the effect of seeing the world through a fancy camera equipped with a fish-eye lens! I had no depth perception whatsoever, and very little peripheral vision. I was glad when the '80's fashions were a thing of the past!

When the eye doctor with the gah-lohsses built a fancy new house at the edge of town, it was quite the event. He and his wife had the main part of the house, and there was a mother-in-law wing built on each end of the house for their mothers. Whenever we would drive by, Mom would comment that I had probably financially underwritten at least one of those wings! It's a distinct possibility.