“Amy, I’m telling you right now that you can’t use contacts. You’re going to need bifocals and use them for a while before we can talk about contacts,” Dr. Anon said, leaving me feeling like an 8-year-old.
Well, I can behave like an 8-year-old.
“I don’t want bifocals. I can read just fine,” I said, kicking in the chair.
“Well, once we begin to correct your distance, you’ll need to . . .”
“I’ll need to what?” I yelped. “Are you telling me that we have to wreck my close-up vision to straighten out my distance?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He crossed his arms.
I glared and heard the music from “A Fistful of Dollars” echo in my ears.
I don’t have anything against corrective eyewear. It’s just that I’ve never been able to stand the feeling of glasses on my face. For a greater part of my life, I refused to wear sunglasses while at the beach. I refused to wear goggles while snowboarding and instead squinted my way through the snowy hills, much like I’d been squinting my way while driving for the last few months. I’d barely passed my eye exam when renewing my license.
Additionally, I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached to my body. You name it, I’ve lost it: jewelry, keys, money, phones, shoes. I even lost a car once – but I digress. My point is that even cheap glasses are expensive, and I really don’t want one more thing to keep track of in my life.
“Just calm down, place your chin in the cup and tell me what you see.”
Doing as he instructed, I strained to make sense of the squiggly lines dancing in the lenses. Was I in a microbiology class or an optometrist’s office?
“Read from left to right.”
I inhaled deeply.
“7, 3, 4, S…”
“Amy, those are letters,” Dr. Anon deadpanned.
“[Expletive deleted],” I responded.
Together, he and I went through the motions of “better, worse, better, worse,” until we, that is, he, arrived at a conclusion: “As I suspected, you’ll need bifocals.”
“I don’t want bifocals. I want contacts,” I said, clearly testing his patience.
“Amy, you’re not getting a contact prescription. Go out to the lobby and pick out some frames,” said Dr. Anon, his voice full of that faux patience that parents and physicians use when they’re tired of a child’s obnoxious protestations.
Strolling to the lobby, I perused floor-to-ceiling walls of eyewear offerings, nixing each as I moved along. “Stupid, stupid, dumb, old-looking, too sparkly, not sparkly enough.”
Turning on my heel, I marched back into the optometrist’s office area and caught him in the hall.
“Are you sure you can’t just write me a prescription for contacts?”
With a sigh, the weary optometrist stared, rubbing his temples, which is usually what happens when I’ve worn someone down. A thrill ran up my spine. I was going to win.
Shaking his head, my optometrist huffed, “Go. Pick. Out. Some. Frames.”
I called him a name. In the lobby, I snatched a pair of tortoise frames off the wall, stomped over to Lynn, his assistant, and said, “I’ll take these.”
“Well, these are men’s.”
“I don’t care. I hate everything else, so it’s these or nothing.”
A few days later, I marveled as I drove down the road. Trees had leaves. I no longer mistook sticks for snakes or windblown grocery bags for abandoned kittens on the roadside. I didn’t have to turn the radio down to read street addresses. I also felt seasick for an entire week of wearing them, but that subsided.
I still don’t use them to read. I mostly use them for driving. I misplace them six times a week, but I have yet to succumb to the suggestion that a “fashionable eyeglass chain” will help. Most people have been kind, but one friend – my best friend – burst into laughter when she saw them.
“Amy, those are hideous.”
“I know,” I laughed. “I hated everything else, so it was these or nothing.”
“Well,” she snorted, “At least the roads are safer because of them.”
