Thoughts I Had About My Glasses Fifteen Years Ago Vs. Thoughts I Have About My Glasses Now

Fifteen years ago my vision was shockingly bad. I think it was around -9.5 in one eye and -11 in the other by the end? Here is the only thought I ever had about my glasses, lasting no more than a second:

• Are my glasses on? (They always were)

I guess sometimes I was asleep, but that was pretty much it.

Then about ten or twelve years ago I got laser eye surgery. Not LASIK, the other one. PRK, which I don't know what that stands for, but even though it took forever to recover and I freak out at the thought of someone reshaping my cornea, it was easily the best bodily intervention I've ever experienced, including transition.

That said, about a year ago I started thinking "Why are the letters and numbers in front of subway trains so fuzzy? They should write them in big clear letters so you can always see what train is coming," before I realized that my surgery was sort of wearing off, so I went back to the optometrist for the first time in years and got fitted for new glasses.

The problem now is that my eyes are only a little bad, something like -1.75 and -2, so I don't always need my glasses. Which means that now I forget my glasses all the time, or can't figure out how I'll carry them in their little case without getting crushed before I need them, or I don't want to wear them with a mask because they'll get fogged up or something.

This was the best part about laser eye surgery, bar none. I never needed to remember a part of my body when I left the house. I just took the body with me! And in some ways it was even better when I had just dogshit eyesight because there was still no option of leaving the house without them. I wouldn't have been able to make it to the front door; it would have been like trying to leave the house without my own face. But as it stands now, I don't really need my glasses in the house (unless I'm writing something really long), nor even immediately walking out onto the street, until I'm waiting for a subway or in a big room somewhere or need to read a street sign a few yards away and suddenly I realize I don't have my glasses and that's a problem.

• Where are my glasses?
• Why aren't they in their little pouch?
• What do they look like again?
• What happened to that special little cleaning cloth that came in their little pouch?
• Why isn't the little pouch in the part of my backpack I usually keep it in?
• Where did I put my glasses?
• Are they at home?
• Why doesn't this sign look right?
• [Opening the dishwasher just as it's finished running and still full of hot steam] My God, the world's gone all steamed over somehow! There's some sort of wretched hot mist that's blurred the edges of the world –
• Why can't I see whatever that is over there –
• Why in the hell am I wearing glasses? I don't need these –
• Everything in the corner of my eyes looks very weird!
• [After taking my glasses off] I'm being spun about, possibly by some sort of invisible mist!
• What did I bring these for? I don't need them, and never will again!
• What good do these stupid glasses do me at home, where I don't need them?

In sum: you should either get laser eye surgery and hope it sticks (I know I have no right to complain! I got pitch-perfect vision for over a decade, and now I have slightly less than perfect vision, but still way better vision than I ever had as a child) or let your eyesight deteriorate so badly that you never have to wonder where your glasses are, because they're either "on your face" or you're "in serious trouble." This middle-of-the-road stuff is for the birds.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]