Mine eyes have seen...wait, what is that?

Tomorrow, I go to the optometrist. The primary impetus is the fact that my glasses are falling apart. Screws keep falling out, the lenses keep falling out...it's time for new frames. I currently wear only reading glasses, first prescribed at the tender age of 16, which is pretty unusual. This is not the kind of thing that can be fixed with those little magnifying reading glasses you can buy at the drug store for four bucks. The condition I have is one which, if identified early in life, is now totally fixable through "muscle strengthening" exercises for the eyes. Yes, if diagnosed before the age of 6 or so, all your eyes need to do is hit the bench press a few times a week, and you're cured. But alas, they did not yet know this back in the day when I was young.

Last time, the optometrist told me that by the time of my next eye exam, I would probably also need corrective lenses for my distance vision. This is a radical change. Up until now, the glasses just went on for reading, or extensive computer viewing. In fact, they actually ruin my distance vision, so I have to take them off to see more than four feet in front of me. That's why you see people with their reading glasses on little strings around our necks - we take the glasses off every time we have to look up, which lends itself to forgetting them on the photocopier, the dining room table -wherever our reading activity may have been interrupted.

If I do have to get distance-vision glasses, I will still needed reading help, which means - I can barely type it - BIFOCALS. And I'm not even 40! Plus, I will have to make the monumental fashion decision of which frames to buy. How does anyone decide that? How do all you nearsighted people pick out a single, expensive, breakable fashion accessory that you're going to wear each and every day? Personally, I find it very daunting.

In talking with a colleague recently, I said, "Hey, did you get new glasses?" and he politely pointed out that yes, they were new, in the sense that he PREVIOUSLY DIDN'T WEAR GLASSES, a fact which surprised the heck out of me. So, if everyone is as unobservant as I apparently am, perhaps I shouldn't assume that my new, glasses-wearing self will be such a shock to the system for those who know me. When I get a little wigged out about the bifocals, I remind myself that I'm the last one in my family to need glasses - including my kid sister, who is now legally required to wear corrective lenses while driving. I may have to wear my bifocals on a little string around my neck like a granny, but at least I haven't yet failed the eye exam at the DMV.