When I was in the third grade I had to get glasses. I guess I have had vision issues all along it just went south very quickly when it went bad.

At first I hated to wear the glasses until I stood outside and looked up at the trees and saw that with the lens in front of my eyes I could see each leaf and its magnificent profusion of colors and details. Without the lenses in front of my eyes I could only discern a large blob with a variety of colors but they were void of form.

Even as a dumb kid I could see the benefits of the glasses. Vanity be-hanged. So once I started to wear my glasses I wore them in earnest. Over the years I will say, especially a at a young age I had bad taste in picking out frames.

What does an eleven year old girl with no fashion sense know about what to wear on her face as a semi-permanent adornment. For a few years running I had stiff pink plastic cat eye glasses with fake jewels at the temples. They were hideous. Very utilitarian and stout to be sure. One thing I did insist on though, was that when I had any pictures taken that I be given time to remove my glasses. I stood pretending I did not wear glasses. That is when the vanity crept in. Or should I say roared in. I never minded my picture being taken it just had to be sans the glasses.

Fast forward to now when the glasses no longer affect my visual outcomes and I wear them for very different reasons. Then the picture taking exhortations about my glasses was only pertinent to taking my picture with those HUGE wraparound sun glasses that take up half of your face. I stopped wearing those even though they were moderately helpful as they were too hot, and caused my face to get sweaty and uncomfortable so I gave up seeing something for comfort.

Now when most people see me I have on a pair of glasses. I have wore  the same pair for the last ten years. No need to change the prescription as I don’t wear them to see with. I wear them sort of like safety glasses. They keep me semi-safe from objects that because I cannot see them, would sneak up and puncture my eyeball. Spilling vitrious fluid out and deflating my eye like a beach ball. Don’t want that for sure.

A few times they have worked for exactly that purpose. One time my husband (not deliberatly)   left a pair of the old fashioned rabbit ear antenna on the floor with the “ear” pointing straight up. I did not see them and as I bent to see what was on the floor the tip of the single antenna raced up the side of my nose and rested at the nose piece of my glasses. The path of destruction was thwarted because I had my glasses on. Had I not had them on the antenna would have continued on its path and ended up poking my eyeball in the corner of the eye. I still shudder to think how close I came to disaster. While my eyes no longer see very well I still like the plump eyeball feature and the way it has of filling out my eye socket and holding up my eye lids.

Although,nowadays, they make some wonderful prosthetics that amount to more than just a marble with an eyeball painted on it. They are very sophisticated.

In another instance I had a guest who left the upper cupboard door open. It is at just the right height to be an eye poker-outer. I caught myself in time as my glasses banged into the door edge with a thud.

Now here is where I am sure everyone will have a horror story to tell about someone they know or in your family who had an eye issue that went gory. Please do not share those as I don’t want those images dancing around in my head.

Suffice to say, I liked my glasses for what I saw and now I like then for what they protect me from because I do not see. Two sides of the same coin.

Blessings, Denise

From the writer of seeingdifferences.com