Why would anyone wear a monocle? What was the point? I can see two blazingly obvious things wrong with the idea:
[ul]
[li]Wouldn’t both eyes need some form of correction? How often does it happen that only one eye is bad enough to need a lens?[/li][li]Wouldn’t the trigeminal nerve be a blistering mass of pain? Holding the eyepiece in place is not a natural thing for those muscles to be doing for hours on end. People would feel it.[/li][li]It gets knocked out at the slightest emotional shock. Your wife told you she thinks you’re fat? It’s on the floor. Your daughter is marrying a mere clerk and moving to Argentina? Man, your monocle is gone. Kiss it goodbye.[/li][/ul]
Well, you’d only use it for close work. It’s like a monocular reading lens. You don’t use it all the time.
[QUOTE=Derleth]
[ul]
[li]Wouldn’t both eyes need some form of correction? How often does it happen that only one eye is bad enough to need a lens?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
My right eye is far sighted, and my left eye is near sighted. I’m either going to get a monocle or an eye patch, then become a character actor in Hollywood.
OK, that makes sense but it’s at odds with the popular image of the monocle.
If they hate you, they switch conditions in the night.
Same here. Right eye far sighted and left eye near sighted.
I am slightly crosseyed; enough that I can’t look at the same object with both eyes at the same time, so I always use one eye.
My eye doctor told me that it is fairly common that people with my condition end up with entirely different prescriptions in both eyes.
Actually, it’s kind of neat. When I’m at work in front of the computer, I’m using my left eye. When I’m in traffic, reading distant street signs, I bring my right eye to bear. No glasses involved at all.
[QUOTE=Derleth]
Why would anyone wear a monocle? What was the point? I can see two blazingly obvious things wrong with the idea:
[ul]
[li]Wouldn’t both eyes need some form of correction? How often does it happen that only one eye is bad enough to need a lens?[/li][/quote]
It’s not unusual for people to have different vision in each eye. My daughter needs correction in her left eye, but has bad vision in her right. She wears glasses, but a monocle woudl do.
[quote]
[li]Wouldn’t the trigeminal nerve be a blistering mass of pain? Holding the eyepiece in place is not a natural thing for those muscles to be doing for hours on end. People would feel it.[/li][/quote]
Not realyl. The monocle is fitted so you don’t need to hold it in place all the time; it touches both the bone above the eyebrows, the nose, and the cheek all at once. They are much bigger than eyeglass lenses, so you aren’t really straining if they’re fitted properly.
Obviously, one shouldn’t use Three Stooges movies as a guide to how people wore monocles.
I occasionally use mine as a menu reader in restaurants.
Additionally, I’m currently working on a routine in which I get the bill/check and feign surprise at the amount I am expected to pay. I then raise an eyebrow, thus causing the monocle to fall majestically into what remains of my dessert.
The eyepiece is retained by a cord to prevent accidents such as you describe but the length of the cord only caters for standing-up surprises, hence the difficulties I’m experiencing in perfecting the sketch without damage to the monocle.
I believe that monocles often had some sort of ribbon or string threaded through the frame so that if the wearer should lose his or her grip on it the monocle would wind up suspended rather than broken on the floor.
“That was my third monocle this week! I simply must stop being so horrified.”
Watching Hogan’s Heroes I saw the proper way it was used in many episodes. Kernal Klink would use it properly, while if asked it’s proper use, Sergent Schultz would say “I know nothing. Nothing!”
Instead of bifocals, my mother wears a different prescription in each eye. She said it didn’t take long to learn how to use one eye for close distances and the other for farther distances. She’s an ophthalmologist, and she says lots of patients prefer this system to bifocals as well.
[QUOTE=Derleth]
[li]Wouldn’t both eyes need some form of correction? How often does it happen that only one eye is bad enough to need a lens?[/li][/QUOTE]
My glasses only have one prescription lens. I have astigmatism in my right eye and 20/20 in my left.
Was there ever a nose-grip option for monocles? Sort of like pince-nez, minus one lens frame?
Doesn’t that mess with your depth perception? My eyes are both very near-sighted, but occasionally I only wear one contact for a day or so, and I tend to run into walls and other large obstacles.
I wait for the day I meet a person with glasses fastened as a piercing on the face. I’m betting that somebody has done this, but I want to see it in person.
:rolleyes: “What has been seen cannot be unseen.”
But they’re usually such a reliable etiquette guide…
Depth perception?
What’s that?
Something I have never had. Fortunately, there are close to a dozen monocular cues to depth that allow folks like me to live normal lives and even parallel park, even if we can’t enjoy 3D movies or those funky stereo images.
“My glasses keep sliding down my nose”
“So, get one of those sets of pierced glasses.”
“I did. Now when they slide down my face, they take the nose with them.”