I’ll sympathize, even if others don’t so much. I also counted myself lucky as a kid that I didn’t need glasses (though few people I knew had to wear them, so not incredibly lucky). Then I turned 12. I’m used to having them now, but I really wish I could do without them. Too squeamish for contacts, and far to much so for sugery–not to mention that my prescription keeps changing. My left eye is getting blurry again. I also had the ‘take them off for reading’ thing at first, but now I have to get within about a foot and a half of something to see something clearly, so if I’m at my computer I don’t always take them off. Not to mention it’s bloody near impossible to keep the lenses clean. I’ve gotten used to seeing through the dirt, but it is easier to see for that five minutes after I clean them before they get dirty again.
I can’t even brag that my vision is better than my parents sighs
Am I luckier than some people? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t wish that I didn’t have to bother with it all.
My eyesight is so bad that until very recently I was told I couldn’t wear soft lenses. Apparently, there are now some fancy new soft lenses that can be made in a strong enough prescription, but for years it was gas permeable or glasses. And when your presciption is as strong as mine, glasses just aren’t enough. I see about a zillion times better with contacts than with glasses. I still wear gas permeable, btw, after fifteen years I’m used to 'em.
So…yes, sympathy. It sucks. BUT you can get used to it. And being able to see is great.
It’s not just the Army – you should see the glasses that get foisted on Air Force people going through training. Scary ugly, those things are, but they do look sturdy, and who has the energy or time to try to get laid then anyway?
My brother didn’t have to wear them, but he now has a freebie pair of wire-rim type glasses courtesy of the AF. I’d have taken them for free, though I wouldn’t have paid for them, and I don’t think he would have either. They’re not awful, but they’re not great either.
I wish I’d gotten my dad’s eyes…he was just contemplating picking up a pair of reading glasses at the age of 41, when he died. I only got ONE eye from him, apparently, since I have a good eye and a bad one. That’s probably the only reason I stuck with contacts as long as I did, and I’m wishing I’d switched earlier, because the switch was a lot less awful than I’d been told it probably would be.
Everyone should by a microfiber lens cleaning cloth, or fifty. Keep one on you at all times, they really clean glasses very well.
All glasses get scratched as time passes but 99% of scratching is too small to be seen by your eye so you don’t even notice.
Contacts may be easier for some but not me. I tried them in the 80s and I don’t think anything has changed in contact technology that would make them more suitable. My big problem with them was I have mildly problematic allergies, and while it doesn’t bother my day to day life periodically my eyes will water up. And other times they will be very dry, contacts just seemed to exacerbate this problem. So the new contacts that supposedly are softer or can be kept in for months just don’t seem like they would do anything to correct that problem.
I have mild allergies too, and chronically dry eyes; I get about two hours out of
the contacts that other people wear for a month before I claw them out of my eyes. I keep hoping as contact lens technology gets better and better that someday I’ll be able to wear them. Oh well. Life goes on.
I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 14 months old, but I’m the lucky one. It was very uncommon for babies to be fitted with glasses in 1944, but they saved 10% of the vision in my right eye so that I can sense some movement and color from that side. The left eye can be corrected to about 20/30 on an allergy-free day.
That little bit of vision in the right eye has made an enormous difference in my field of vision. And since I’ve never had biocular vision, I’ve never been aware of what I’m missing. I can’t judge distances so I drive by ear. Painting my toenails is an adventure in sensitivity to pressure and observation: Did the brush disappear behind my toe?
Although my eyes tire easily, my husband was in radio and theater for a while and has a magnificent reading voice. I didn’t have to take the GRE to get into grad school. And I had financial assistance for both undergraduate and grad school. My daughter married an optometrist
I had fun with contacts for a while, but I would often forget and put my glasses on on top of them. They are as much a part of me as my thumbs. Besides, as a teacher, I needed glasses to peer over in a menacing grimace.
Now I’m a cool Grammy with frames by Chrome Hearts. (No Harley to go with them though.)
“If you ain’t where you are, you ain’t no place.” – Sherman T. Potter
Second: If I’m bitching, I’m doing it on behalf of the other posters as well–particularly Anaamika, with whom you also had that exchange. I do apologize, though; I may have been using a hint of an attitude in your posts to sort of complain about a larger phenomenon, which isn’t really fair.
When I was born, I was blind. My eyes were so unable to focus on anything that I could distinguish day from night and that was about it. At the age of 2, my mother continued to pound the pavement for a doctor who would actually pay attention to the fact that my eyes never landed on anything - and worse, they moved randomly around independent of each other. She thought it was weird that I had never looked at her while being fed or having a diaper changed. She finally got a pediatric opthalmologist to examine me.
The weakness in my eye muscles was so horribly bad that he feared waiting any longer to fix it would’ve left me blind permanently, because the unused nerves would never learn to properly communicate with my brain. I got my first pair of extremely strong glasses to focus the light onto my retinas and saw for the first time when I was 2.5 years old. I saw the dimly lit examination room at the eye doctor’s office. It’s the first memory I have.
It took 7 years of visits to his office every six weeks to correct my vision to the point that I no longer need glasses to see, and a lot of years of ugly, thick, coke bottle glasses that caused me to be made fun of. I hated being made fun of, picked on, and bullied by other kids because I was different, but I loved being able to see more than that.
It’s not so bad, needing glasses. Vision is valuable. My recommendation to anyone is to do whatever is necessary. And besides, glasses are much more stylish these days than they were back then for me.
I had to get bifocals when I was nine (yes, nine!) I was the only third-grader in my class who even had glasses, but bifocals? My parents didn’t even have them yet!
Now, I’m just envious of all of you who can afford to see. I haven’t had any glasses or contacts for the past five years, and I can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me. I can’t even get my driver’s license renewed because I can’t pass the stupid eye test.
I don’t remember what it’s like to see clearly. I can’t even imagine not needing corrective lenses. My world is in soft-focus. Pretty, but annoying. I’d like to see the edges of things, sometimes. I’d like to read the subtitles to a movie. I’d like to know what the road signs say.
Glasses or contacts are a minor inconvenience, but one that I’m used to. Not being able to see anything clearly is a major fucking annoyance.
I imagine it’s tougher for folks who’s eyes start to go bad later in life; I’m used to it, and I can barely remember a time when I could see clearly without any help.
Hm. Just a random thing, for those with really bad eye allergies: I had the same situation when I first got contacts (thankfully an environmental change has helped). My opthamologist wrote me a perscription for some eye drops. A few drops, twice daily, and the problem was infinitely better. The drops themselves stung like hell for a second or two, at least to my overly-sensitive eyes, but kept my eyes from flooding when I wore my contacts.
Polycarbonate lenses (light and scratch resistant, but a bit more expensive), which I’ve always gotten for my glasses, already block UV. My strong recommendation is to get glasses that have an optional sunglasses overlay. Most look pretty good (and once people are used to seeing you with glasses, the overlay doesn’t look any different) and there are some times that you just need to make the world less bright.
Oh, and FWIW, I hated the fact that I needed glasses when I first got them, but I genuinely like them now. I got some nice frames, and I think I just look good in them.
Count me as another one who likes my glasses.
I have a few pairs of contacts to wear for special occasions b/c the glasses don’t photograph well (they reflect too much light), and for sports / the gym, but I wear my glasses almost all the time.
I’ve been wearing them since I was about nine (my first pair was pink and plastic - I’d like to burn those school pictures, please). I got contacts at about 14 b/c I was self-concious, then started wearing the glasses in college again b/c I just didn’t want to put in the effort of cleaning the contacts so much.
Finally, I just started wearing them all the time, and they’re like a part of my face. If they were cheaper, I’d probably have several pairs and treat them more like an accessory than something necessary to go about daily life. I’m actually glad I need a new pair, because I have so much fun picking them out!
Even if my vision magically got better, I’d probably still wear a pair of glasses with non-prescription lenses, just because I’m so used to them.
If you want to have photographs with glasses on, there’s an easy way around the glare problem. If you have an old pair of glasses lying around, take the lens’ out. Voila, photo-friendly glasses. I did that for my grad photos.
I’m used to my glasses by now, but I still don’t like them. It’s a small thing, but a small thing I wish I didn’t have to bother with. Plus, as my eyes get worse, and the rims of my glasses keep getting thinner, it’s getting bloody hard for me to find them if I ever put them down. I just can’t see them. It’s not uncommon for me to spend five mintues or so playing Hide and Seek with my glasses after I’ve been reading. Doesn’t help that I have a rather spotty memory for that sort of thing.