Glassers

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…