Glassers

I was 15 years old and I had been wearing contact lenses for a year or two. It had taken me a long time and a huge amount of effort to become accustomed to wearing them, so I was a little paranoid about the health of my eyes and taking care of my contacts, which…

I’ve been wearing eyeglasses for most of my life. Astigmatism and near sightedness dictate corrective lenses. Been wearing them for so long I don’t seem to be me without them…. This one day I misplaced my glasses. Then I remembered I had left them in their case in my desk at school. Mom scolded me…

Finally he asked for a date! We went to the library—a safe place to get to know each other, sat at a heavy oak table, chairs close together then opened our books as if to study. He began staring, leaning too close and looking through my coke-bottle glasses said Don’t ever marry anyone who is…

By 1967 I’d been wearing glasses about three years. This was way before designers thought there was any money to be made crafting frames for the nearsighted. Pretty much everyone who wore glasses back then looked like a dork. If you already looked like a dork without glasses, then you were really in trouble…. So,…

I was only six years old when I flunked an eye test held at the Chicago Public Schools. A week later I was looking through a black contraption with goggles that looked like it belonged on a Russian submarine. I could barely make out the big E on top, much less the rest of the…

I learned a trick in 6th grade to see the board without glasses – pull the corner of your eye back, squash the eyeball a bit and voila, you can see clearer. This trick got me through the next three years. Vanity ruled my young life. Finally, I gave in and got glasses in sophomore…

When I was a shy, bookish fourteen, my two grandmas got together and convinced my parents that if they got me contact lenses, I would have more self-confidence, be prettier, and maybe attract some boys. Those were the pioneer days of contact lenses. They were hard little discs…. The darn things worked well enough, but…

The most striking thing about my glasses seems they are never there when I need them. Recently for example, a library book was overdue and I had been charged a reminder fee. I hurried to the bank to take care of the wire transfer. I approached a confidently looking employee in his thirties, asking for…