I wear contact lenses. I’ve corrected my vision since Grade 2. The first time I wore my glasses, it was for the Christmas pageant at school. My classmate Caroline – yes, I remember her name – said to me “Angels don’t wear glasses” and that line has lived in infamy in my life since then. I was originally diagnosed as near-sighted with an astigmatism, the latter I seemed to have grown out of as no optometrist has noted it subsequently. I wore glasses from that fateful Christmas pageant until I was about 25. Playing softball is difficult if your depth perception is off. So, you either miss the ball every time, or you correct your vision and deal with the sweaty lenses.
By that point, contact lenses were moving into the daily types and so much more comfortable and affordable. I figured I would correct my vision AND avoid the inconvenience of glasses.
I have two strong memories of vision: when I first got my glasses, your brain needs time to adapt the new distorted images and although you can see properly for the first time, my brain had spent almost 8 years adapting the images for me. So when I first got my glasses, I could see the TV better, but I my brain also interpreted my height as being significantly higher than I was actually tall. That was pretty disconcerting for a kid. I remember running across the street from my house, looking down and wondering how I got so high up from the road.
The second was when I was 25. For those of you who do not need corrective lenses, you will not be able to relate. When you cannot see properly without glasses, it’s something of an anchor. You have these things on that dint the side of your head, leave red marks on your nose, and that get so filthy you wonder how you could see through them. And after spending about 1/2 hour trying to jam lenses into my eyeballs that my reflexes just weren’t having, the first drive home without the glasses anchor was miraculous. I could see, I couldn’t feel the lenses, it was like normal people. It was amazing.
Now that I am old, my eye doctor has informed my that my vision is changing yet again. And that would explain why I cannot see to pluck my eyebrows with my lenses in. In fact, I have to be correctionless to be able to see about 50% of the hairs. So, every two weeks when I remove my lenses for a 12 hour rest, I also pluck my eyebrows.
July 3rd, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: If you cannot see to pluck, you cannot see you need to pluck. When life taketh, it giveth.
- Baby New Potatoes
- bunch of tat tsoi
- bunch arugula
- a bag of lettuce mix
- small heads of bok/ joi choi
- snap peas
- green peas