I set out to write a very melodramatic account of getting glasses. I’ve always been able to see rather well, or so I thought. It’s been over 10 years since my last visit to the optometrist and I’m sure my vision had degraded somewhere in there.

Everything was different. They used to have the lights and the poofs, but it just felt different this time. There were 3 machines when I went in for my pre-exam. There was an autofocus machine which determined what I was looking at as a scene appeared before me, constantly flicking in and out of focus, a puff machine – blowing air into each eye to see the reflex, and finally a crazy camera that took a picture of the back of my eyeball, does it go through the front? I assume so, but I don’t know!

In any case all the technology was well and good until we came to the actual exam where they put (projected) letters in front of me. I couldn’t make out nearly any of them of any good size, and apparently one eye was far worse then the other.

I had always claimed my good eyesight and hadn’t really noticed a difference. The past few years I had run into difficult sign reading, at night, while driving… but it was more of a joke then a determination. I have astigmatism so that complicated things – neighter neear or far, just oblong development so one side doesn’t match the other. The lenses should correct that.

I had wanted glasses as a kid for a short while, and even was diagnosed with a “lazy eye” based on my faking eye exam results to come to an end result of glasses. You think you’re so clever when you’re young. In any case this most recent exam came out of the blue. I was looking at my screens at work and realized I couldn’t see as well as I’d like, add that on top of constant reminders everytime I couldn’t read something but my wife could, or asking her for clarification… I knew it was inevitable that I had some deterioration.

All in all it wasn’t horrible, just an irregularity – 88/80 I’m presuming are my numbers. They don’t really tell you and they discourage you from ordering online. I don’t blame them, you wan to try them on, but I can find the frames I liked and tried on and then order them directly.

In any case I got my glasses today and put them on. The perspective is completely different, and my biggest worry is the fact that when I put them on I lose my own vision. Taking them off and I’m all blurred up, 10x worse then I ever was before them… so what if I become that, what if I can’t live without glasses ever??? It will be like that Twilight Zone episode where the lover of books has all the books in the world in a post apocalyptic shelter but then breaks his glasses… it’s just not right.

I’ve been adapting, it’s strange, things even seem skinnier, I’m changing my whoel perception of a lot of things, and the biggest thought to blow my mind was that everything that I thought I knew, what it looked like, has now been changed. This is the new view… and it’s right?

The new: