At age 10, when the routine screening at school showed I was nearsighted.
Of course, when they told me that, it explained something I’d noticed at Sunday Mass a few weeks earlier - depending on which way the person in front of me was tilting his/her head at any given moment, I could see the priest clearly, or as a bit of a blur. It turned out that my right eye was noticeably stronger than my left (still is), so if I saw with both eyes I could see fine; if the line of sight for my right eye was blocked and I only saw with my left, the world got blurry.
Dweezil’s nearsightedness was caught at a school screening, though he was in the 2nd or perhaps 3rd grade at the time. Moon Unit’s was caught by herself (and us) at a similar age when she noted she could not read the scoreboard at a baseball game.
Neither kid surprised us; Typo Knig’s vision is not quite in the “Coke Bottle” territory but near enough. So far, the kids seem to be splitting the difference - they got glasses earlier than I did but later than Typo, and their vision seems to be worse than mine at similar ages, but better than Typo’s.
As far as presbyopia: I think I first noticed that at about age 40. In many ways this sucks far worse than nearsightedness: it means that I now have to have more than one pair of glasses :mad:. Yeah, I’ve tried progressives that combine distance / closeup in one pair but both times it led to immediate headaches. I did finally get a pair of progressives recently that combine room-distance and reading/computer distances - I still need a separate pair for driving but otherwise I’d have had to have three pairs!
My parents just thought I was clumsy for years. I would bump into door frames with my left shoulder, trip over things on the floor.
In second grade my teacher finally realized that I have a lazy eye. It still tracks correctly, but sees at around 20-200. My other eye is almost perfect.
I was 12 years old when I got glasses. Much like Olives, I was SHOCKED at how crisp and clear everything was with glasses! Amazing.
I was almost as amazed when I had Lasik four years ago–that was such a great thing, to see without glasses or contacts.
And the nice part is people who are nearsighted generally don’t go into reading glasses as soon as those who are not. Yay! So I’ll be 48 in February and got a clean bill of vison health in September. Take THAT, eye balls!
I found out (or I should say they found out) my first day of kindergarten, and I have a very clear memory of it. As soon as the teacher wrote her name on the board, I told her I couldn’t see it. So she moved me to the front of the room and I told her I still couldn’t see it. She said that if I couldn’t read it, she would teach me to read it but first we had to learn our letters . . . . I responded, offended, that I didn’t say I couldn’t read it, I said I couldn’t see it. (At five, I’d been reading for a couple of years and I was mad she thought I was a baby who couldn’t read, I think that’s why I remember it so well.) My mom took me to the eye doctor and viola, glasses.
My eyesight was so poor (about 20/200 in both eyes, if uncorrected), that getting glasses for me was like, I don’t know, stepping into a world of color for the first time, or having a light turned on. The detail! On everything! I recall the car ride home with my new glasses, staring at the pine trees beside the road. I had not known other people could see individual needles, instead of just tree-shaped green blobs. I hadn’t known that sort of fine detail even existed, since I had of course assumed everyone saw the world as I did, in broad colors and blurs, unless you held the object six inches in front of your nose.
ETA: For a long time, my experience made me unsympathetic to people complaining they had to wear glasses, because my glasses had been such a gift to me. But of course vanity eventually caught up with me and in junior high I started wearing contacts because I thought my glasses were unattractive. I still wear contacts most of the time, because I don’t think I look good in glasses. And my uncorrected eye sight is still so bad that at night when I go to bed, I have to set my glasses down in the exact same spot, because if I put them somewhere else, or they fall off the nightstand, I can’t find them in the morning, because I can’t see them.
I started having trouble reading fine print earlier this year (I’m 52). I took a math tables book to the store and found that 1.25x reading glasses solve the problem for now.
Hey SomeUserName, IANAOphthalmologist, but I do work for one and I work with patients all day. What you’re describing sounds as if it may be the early onset of presbyopia. It’s definitely worth seeing an eye doctor about, but in many cases the “prescription” ends up being a $5.00 of reading glasses from Walgreens.
I was 11. We had just moved into a new house and while looking out the bay window in the breakfast nook I realized I was seeing a huge blob of green instead of individual leaves.
I was in college, in lecture and I was not paying attention - talking with my friend & writing non-class related notes. The professor used the blackboard heavily.
Usually, I could make out what he was writing based on what he was saying, the two were usually somewhat related, and I didn’t have a problem copying the equations and notes down from the board. But that day, I hadn’t listened at all; he could have said anything. And so I had no clue what he was writing about, and when I looked at the board, I couldn’t make out a single mark. It may as well have been wavy lines. It might have been wavy lines. But probably not.
Doctor said that I needed glasses. I don’t wear them often, as i’ve left the world of lecture halls, but there’s more detail in the world than I usually see.
It never occured to me that I needed glasses. I was in the second grade, and the teacher noticed me squinting and unable to follow along, even after moving me up to the front of the room. She notified my parents, and the eye exam confirmed it. I was amazed at how easy it was to read the board after that!
As for reading glasses, I started noticing the need to move my book further away in order to read it, or I needed to hold things up to the light. I use drug store reading glasses to correct the problem. I’m 46.
I have a lazy left eye, too; with a little work I can make it go cockeyed. At 16 I could see well enough with my right to go without glasses while taking Driver’s Ed (I faked passing the eye test with my left) but it’s become progressively worse over the years. Now I can’t see clearly for much more than a foot.
I was six and it would have been picked up in one of our regular eye exams.
Now it’s the reading glasses debate. I checked the poster at the glasses display when I go by and it makes me think I don’t need them yet, but handsewing and multiple tries threading the needle makes me think otherwise!
My college had a large fountain at its entrance. One of the campus sororities had a charming tradition: each year, on a night in May (undisclosed in advance), the senior sisters would get drunk at the sorority house, then take a topless dip in the fountain. The idea was to disrobe, splash around, and then get back to the house before being noticed by campus police and/or horny college guys.
Sophomore year I was coming back from the library when I happened upon the annual topless swim, not far from the street from where I was walking…
…and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the moment I discovered I needed glasses. I still haven’t recovered.
When I was nine. The typical blackboard experience. I had started taking my wristwatch off and peering at the board through one of the holes in the leather watchband. The teacher suggested I get tested.
It was a bummer getting glasses, but a number of years later I consoled myself by realizing I had independently “discovered” the pin-hole lens. Couldn’t do that now with my Velcro band!
When I was a freshman in college in Chem 101. We were in an auditorium and the professor used an overhead projector. I kept asking him to adjust the focus and everybody turned around and looked at me strangely.
From that link “momentarily blurred vision when transitioning between viewing distances.”
Thats it! I could not put it into words, but that explains it perfectly.
From computer screen to page it is like I lost something and it takes a second to focus. From paper back to screen I have no problems but that is most likely because I glance at my keyboard first and makes up for the distance.
I am still going to get a doctor appointment but that sounds like what my problem is. I have it others times too and thought I was getting some type of “floaters” but it sounds like just a distance compensation.
Oh yeah, I did the same thing in High School. Glasses were NOT cool. Finally, after almost flunking out of college (nothing to do with vision problems, more to do with being a slacker) I got glasses. I felt like I was drunk for a week with all that extra info coming in from the left side.
I was around 37ish. I was getting hellish headaches at work, and they were really scaring me. Brain tumor? Dangerously high blood pressure? Someone punching me in the head and I was not remembering it? A coworker suggested that my first line of inquiry might be with an opthomologist. Turns out that all I needed was reading glasses. I was straining to see my laptop’s monitor. The doc told me to wear them for any reading, but they bothered me for anything but my laptop.
I don’t have a laptop anymore, so now they just sit here at work, unused. However, I have noticed that at home, I’m having a great deal of difficulty reading any text smaller than about 8 point font. I’m amazed at how small the print can be on things like medication warning labels and such. Maybe I should take my glasses home and see if that improves anything.
I think I probably started needing glasses somewhere around 13, because I noticed that other people could tell that the moon was/was not full, but it was just a white blur to me. Then, when I was 15, I failed the vision test for my learner’s permit. I was mortified. My parents were, too, because they hadn’t realized I had a problem, even though my dad had needed glasses for years before he got them, too. The doc said I should have been able to pass the test even though I was slightly nearsighted, so I went back, and I did. But by 18, I couldn’t even begin to pass the vision test without correction.
And at 40, the magical, mystical presbyopia thing happened. I could no longer read easily or do fine craft-work while wearing glasses or contacts (could do it fine, without) and ended up with progressive lenses, or else readers with my contacts.