Things that sit on some of our noses. Those things that, as children, earned us the nickname of “four eyes.” Spectacles. Yep, I’m talking about specs!
If I sound terse it’s because I have lost my glasses for the ump-teenth time. Yet again, I find myself running around the house trying to find the hiding place… the spot where while I was multi-tasking or shoved so far into my head thinking, I took them off and absentmindedly left them to lie in waiting. (And how am I able to see to write this? I’m wearing my back-up pair and my old prescription.) Argh! Glasses. The joy of my life and the bain of it.
And yes, I once had wonderful vision… until fourth grade when a Rocky Ford optometrist told my parents that I needed them. I still recall picking out those first frames. I must have fawned over 30 or 40 pair before I chose one. You’d have thought these were my shoes for the prom! I recall thinking I looked pretty good in them… Well… I thought that until I stuck them on my face in Mrs. Neal’s classroom and Steven Murphy laughed at me. Then I didn’t think they were that great. I didn’t care if I could see perfectly with them on. I had just been laughed at in my new glasses. Oh I wore them. But I was forever humiliated for about two days. Then I came to the conclusion that Steven Murphy was just another dumb boy in my class, and I got over it.
In college, a wonderful thing happened. I was told that I didn’t need my glasses anymore. (A miracle! I could see to read without them.) And I figured I was home free for the rest of my life. (Are you laughing?) Enter age forty. Enter a change in my vision. I was back in glasses again, but by this time, I knew my place. “Carolyn! Just get some nerdy frame and be done with it. You need to see. Period.”
Now vision at forty for some of us is really rotten. We need the glasses to read, but if we have them on when we look up and out to the distance beyond the page, then we can’t see at all!
How many of you are aware of progressive lens? (And don’t say, “Why not bifocals,” because if anything screams AGE it’s that.) These are wonderful! I could conduct my choir and teach my students without having to take my glasses off every few minutes or wear them on the end of my nose. …I could actually leave the lens in place and still see the faces of my singers. I wanted contact with them. Eye contact! Progressive lens gave me that. Little pleasures in life!
So you’d think that all of this was the end of my tale. NO! And, now we have come full circle. I lose my glasses more often than people pay taxes! I’ve had students hunting for them, parents before a concert looking around, the bros hunting for them (“Mom, if I find them what do I get?” Like I’m the bank and they should be paid for helping. So NOT!) Several times I’ve lost them and they were stuck in my hair on top of my head! Twice I found them in a kitchen cupboard… I have no idea what that was all about. Once I slept in them and how they didn’t get broken to smithereens is a wonder. Several times I left them in restaurants and another time in the bank. I’ve leaned to have something distinctive about my glasses; that way when I (again) leave them somewhere, all will say, “That’s Carolyn’s glasses.” … And, this will be followed with some smart crack about my absentmindedness as they punch out my phone number and tell me to come and get them.
Absentmindedness. When this is your weakness and you’re a hot looking 21 year old kid, it’s not so bad. When you’re… my age, it isn’t as good! You sound like the great cliche that everyone talks about… the brilliant but stupid professor, the sweet old (oh brother!) lady down the street, the woman with one foot in the grave… I’m getting depressed, are you?
And now I must leave you and go hunt! Put the day aside until I find the bloody things! I just checked… they are not in my hair on my head. Damn! That would have made this all so much easier… Now I have to get up and actually search everywhere!
May your eyes be healthy or your glasses ever present!
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple