GLASSES DAY

As some of you are already aware, I wear glasses, for I am pathetically nearsighted and now of course get the extra age-related ball-kick of presbyopia, which sounds like a Protestant religion but is not. I don't think about it much, because I've had to wear corrective lenses since I was eight years old. Contacts didn't work out for me, and I'm too chicken to do LASIK, so that's that. My glasses are just part of my face. So, jump forward from me at age eight to today...yup, folks, today my daughter MissEight got her first pair of glasses. Fortunately for her she does not have the same issues -- one eye is just slightly far-sighted, so she was prescribed reading glasses.

I was so depressed at the news that I needed glasses. I didn't want to be "four-eyes," and I REALLY REALLY REALLY didn't want the glasses my eye doctor picked out for me, which were tortoiseshell cat-eyes, about as uncool as it got in 1970. I made one meek inquiry into getting some wire-rim little round John Lennon-style glasses, but the doctor completely dismissed me, I think because he thought they were too fragile for a child and that John Lennon was a damn commie hippie. Sigh. There was no talking back to a doctor, or any adult. I had to live with them on my face, something that I didn't feel was me at all, and it made me sad and uncomfortable for a long time.

But in 2011, MissEight is able to go to her eye doctor, have her exam, and is able to choose from tons of cool frames, in whatever color she likes. She is treated with respect. All this week she kept asking me, "Are my new glasses here yet? I can't wait!" She was excited!

She came home and got out her summer assigned-reading book and proudly announced that she zoomed from page 7 to page 27 in no time with her new glasses.

If you are eight years old and need glasses, 2011 is where it's at, baby.