Taking Another Look at an Old Vanity
Well, it’s finally happened--a significant symptom of “maturity”--about 15 years earlier than I expected.
No, not gray hair. A dozen years ago the first sprigs of what I prefer to refer to as silver tresses began sprouting and rapidly multiplying among the brown.
That didn’t particularly bother me. But now I have to think about serious aging, because I’m about to lose my visual virginity. I’m getting glasses.
We all have our little vanities, as a nearsighted friend pointed out to me when I described my shock at this prospect. But what I’m finding is that my pride in my lifelong 20/20 vision was not a “little vanity.” It was a huge conceit.
My parents and three sisters have worn contact lenses and glasses almost all their lives. I’ve always been the only person in my family to escape the four-eyed fate. When I was a child, I played my ocular superiority for all it was worth in sibling games of one-upwomanship.
Old boasts die hard. It took me several recent months of eyestrain before I conceded that I needed to see an optometrist. I might have further delayed making an appointment if I hadn’t described my symptoms--tired eyes after a long day of reading and working on my 10-month-old computer, ever-present “floaters” (little specks that keep floating across my field of vision) and occasional diamond-point flashes of light--to a friend. The friend scared me by suggesting that the “diamond points” might be symptoms of glaucoma.
The optometrist, however, quickly reassured me about the glaucoma. No, he said, it sounded like I just had eyestrain (although the diamond points could be symptoms of detached retinas). He ran me through a battery of eye charts and lenses, tapped my eyes’ surface with a little gauge that measures eye pressure, and told me I still have my 20/20--or better--vision. Nevertheless, he talked me into buying a pair of very weak prescription glasses.
Why? Because of all those hours of staring at a computer screen and the printed page.
“Computers have been a real windfall for me,” the doctor confided. “Those and digital instruments.” Such devices don’t necessarily damage vision, according to the doctor, but they do make little flaws more obvious.
Having glasses, said the persuasive optometrist, would help my eyes compensate for a slight farsightedness I’ve probably always had. Doing close work and shifting focus from near to far objects would become easier, he said.
So. Glasses. But just to wear while working, right?
“Oh, I don’t like to say that,” the doctor said, “because then you get closed into the idea of only wearing them in a certain place and at a certain time. You might find that when you go to the theater--or elsewhere--you’ll want to wear them.”
Uh-oh.
Luckily, the fashion frames I picked out have to be special-ordered, so I have a few weeks’ reprieve before I lose my glasseslessness forever.
On one point I’m adamant, though: I am not going to wear these glasses the next time members of my far-flung family gather for a reunion. In fact, I’m not even going to mention them.