I was given a pair of glasses in 5th grade. I seem to recall the eye doctor saying something along the lines of, “If you don’t start treating this now it will be a major problem later.” I didn’t like wearing the glasses. They gave me a headache. So, after about four days, I placed them in a “stuff jug” in our dining room and never wore them again. (Some people have a “stuff drawer.” We had a “stuff jug”, a beautiful porcelain pitcher filled with lottery tickets, loose change, and the occasional pair of prescription eyewear.) I didn’t need glasses then. I could see fine, and easily read the important material of the day: your Cracked magazine, your Archie’s Pal Jughead.
Jump cut to 1990, my 12th grade year. This was the year I actually tried to get good grades for the first time since I was scored on shoe-tying and milk consumption. I knew a good senior year would help me get into community college so I could get a Communications degree and become a disc jockey. (I know, I know…what motivates us does not have to be logical so long as it motivates us.) In the unfamiliar realm of making an effort, I realized that I literally could not read anything on the blackboard from a certain point in the classroom back, or the clock, or…well..anything. So we went to the eye doctor, and this time I wore the glasses every day, even the first few headachy days.
Now, here come a couple of photos of my very first pair of glasses. You know, when I was young I would look at photos of my parents and their friends from the 1970s and think, “How in the world could they possibly dress like that, do their hair like that, furnish their kitchen like that etc. and not know how incredibly dorky it all looks just 20 short years later!?”
This is the sustaining revenge of older generations on those who follow. Because whether you admit it or not, we all have photos like this:
And this:
Fashion eyewear state-of-the-art circa 1990.
Now here we have something even more humiliating. Circa 1996 or thereabouts at SUNY Brockport, and I am sporting newer glasses and a truly foul shaggy haircut. I have these pictures to remind me to get a haircut. Even if I got one a week ago. Even if every hair falls out. Get a damn haircut.
But the real killer here is that my dear friend Dan Connelly, in examining my glasses one evening at the AV Lab, noted that they were part of the Christie Brinkley line. I somehow selected, bought (well, okay, Dad bought), wore for the better part of a year these glasses and did not see the Christie Brinkley logo on the side.
Moving along to KCOW: The Early Years, which were also the final years of giant lenses:
Eventually I settled in on this type of oval frame….I had at least two pairs like this, possibly even three…
Somewhere in amongst the oval frames was a genuine tragedy:
While at Disneyland I tripped over a bench and violently scrambled my face. Also violently scrambled were my glasses. It was during this visit to Mr. Lenscrafters’ Wild Ride that the eye doctor said, “You know, I could give you bi-focals right now!” I answered back with every drop of decorum I could that after spending half a day of my Disneyland vacation at Lenscrafters, bifocals were not something I was ready to handle.
But three years later, I was ready.
And today, I got a new pair of bi-focals with slightly more magnification on the bottom line:
After thirty years, I can’t imagine life without my specs. Besides helping me see the world around me, they help disguise and distract, if only in a small way, from my unbelievably homely face.
I would wear really thick frames to that end but I was not blessed with a prominent nose. One needs a prominent nose to wear thick frames.
And now, because I have no way to finish this:
You had me at Mr. Lenscrafters Wild Ride, Doc!