I've had glasses for more than a decade—since I was in third grade. Without them, 12-point print gets too blurry to read when it's farther than ten inches from my face. (I measured.) Myopia has been such an inescapable part of my life that it featured in my Common App essay (I claimed, perhaps erroneously, that it worsened because I secretly read by the light of my lava lamp after Dad told me to go to bed—this being a sign of my dedication to books and to learning, yada yada yada Amherst didn't want me but I'm not bitter [yes I am]).
Contacts have never appealed to me because a) I don't enjoy poking my cornea, b) I would probably be too lazy to keep track of how old they are and thus develop some blinding disease, c) my eyes aren't as blue as they used to be so it's not like I'm hiding anything spectacular, and d) I am under the illusion that having a strip of darker material across my face breaks up my pale visage and keeps me from looking like a homelier Bella Swan. Thus I am indebted to my frames... but my frames and I have had a storied history.
My first pair, whose lenses were significantly thinner than today's, featured Snoopy saying "Hello!" in a speech bubble on each faux tortoiseshell earpiece. (They were from Costco. I was eight.) This came in handy as a conversation starter, particularly in dance class when I and my fellow aspiring ballerinas were lined up along the barre waiting to jeté across the studio. Evidently my glasses were far friendly than I, though, because I remained the quiet girl who kept to herself and could never manage a double pirouette. Snoopy's gregariousness should have taught me a lesson in Not Being an Introvert, but I didn't take him up on it. I can't ever remember being called "four-eyes," but I might as well have been for all that I felt an outsider.
In either third or fourth grade, I was standing patiently in line in the classroom waiting to go to lunch when one of my lenses decided to pop out. Fortunately I found the tiny screw, so this was repairable—but the first of many glasses mishaps. When I was ten, my glasses slipped from my hands as I was napping in the aisle seat on plane ride to Amsterdam, so upon waking I was terrified that they had been stepped on and crushed and that I would soon end up wandering nearsightedly into a canal. Fortunately an observant flight attendant picked them up and had kept them safe, so I was able to witness my aunt's wedding without squinting.
The next memorable eye-wear was a light blue pair of frames that my mother was convinced would bring our my eyes. This might have been the pair that somehow I managed to leave outside by our hammock overnight, but the scene that I will never forget took place in the summer house my grandmother was renting for a week, about two hours from home. We were watching the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics... when suddenly my glasses just fell off my face, snapped in two at the bridge. To this day I have no idea how that happened—a desperate suicide attempt, I suppose. Until we drove back to our town and I could get new frames (apparently these were beyond fixing), I had to walk around with feeble Scotch tape itching my nose or simply holding the two halves up to my poor eyes.
Then I chose a half-rim pair in navy that went through quite a battering (I recall being quite irate at one of my siblings who had rolled onto them during one of our half-serious brawls) until I needed yet another new prescription, and reverted back to light blue, this time from LensCrafters in the hopes that they would last. And they did persevere into college... until they too gave up the ghost. On spring break last year, as I was just sitting at home minding my own business, once again my frames just snapped and tumbled from where they been so nicely perched. This was a clean break (again, cause unknown), but positioned where the left lens met the bridge and thus, apparently, irreparable. Fortunately I had kept my older but weaker pair and so was able to stumble through the week or so it took for my lenses to be fitted to new frames.
There was only one pair of frames in the Costco store that would fit the lenses, and they were thicker then I had ever tried before. But it was time for a change—and besides, thin frames were obviously not up to deal with the apparently destructive forces of my face. "Havana" also reminded me of Tina Fey's frames, though they have not yet made me as cool as her. We're approaching our one-year anniversary, but since I am once again having trouble making out my teachers' writing on the blackboards, another trip to the optometrist may soon be in order. A girl and her glasses: it's a strange and wonderful thing.
Tune in next week for the second installation of "My Life Through Corrective Appliances," the Orthodontia Edition!
Note: Is it mere coincidence that my lame pun of a title also happens to look like it is wearing spectacles? Decide for yourself.
