Mine Eyes Have seen The Glory

Posted on February 19, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

 

 

“I thought by now you’d realize
there ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes”

Lyin’ Eyes – The Eagles, 1975

Every single morning for 57 years, my day has started exactly the same way.  How many people can make that claim?  How is it possible to be that consistent?  Is it compulsive behavior?  Have I had the same alarm clock?  It is none of these things.  It can be explained very simply.

I wear glasses.

I was five when I got my first pair of glasses, and in one form or another they have been perched on my prominent nose ever since.  With a few interruptions in service.

When I look back at my class picture from grade 1, I see a few of us who look pretty dorky with big, dark rimmed glasses.  My mom, like many of her generation was a great hoarder, and she kept every class picture right up to grade 12.  She still won’t speak to me about my grad picture from university.  She never thought much of my afro.

I was a sports fanatic, which necessitated athletic glasses.  These were popularized by the Hanson brothers in the movie “Slap Shot”.  Ugly does not even begin to describe them but I was looking for functionality.  I wasn’t contemplating walking down the catwalk in Milan during that phase of my life … or any other time, come to think of it.

I tried contacts once.  If you played hockey, you know what it was like having your glasses fog up incessantly.  I had enough trouble finding the back of the net when I could see clearly, let alone peering through steamed up lenses.  Frank used to yell at me: “P.D., that shot couldn’t break an egg!”  Most people take to contacts like a duck to water.  I lasted all of half a day before returning to my old familiar friends.

Invariably, our eyesight begins a downward trajectory as we age.  First it’s bifocals or progressive lenses.  You don’t dare walk down a set of stairs in public until you get the hang of it at home, lest people think you are drunk.

In my fifties, I decided to take the plunge and have laser eye surgery.   I can assure you that this procedure wasn’t vanity rearing its head.  I was just plain tired of wearing specs and thought I would try corrective surgery.  As a golfer, I always had issues when it rained.  Having rain running off your lenses makes an already difficult game that much harder.  Golfers have an abundance of excuses for poor play.  This one was legit.

The surgery didn’t go well.  The day after, I looked in the mirror to shave and it was like the morning after doing shots of tequila.  Red eyes and blurred vision.  I will spare you the details but within days I had a collection of $2.00 reading glasses that would equal in number Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection.  I had a pair for shaving, one for cooking, one for reading, another for the computer, golf … etc. etc.

Finally, I decided to go back to my own eye doctor and was fitted with a lovely pair of trifocals.  I accessorized several years back and have a pair of prescription Bollé sunglasses.  I’m just waiting for the day that the giant magnifying glass makes an appearance when I’m doing the crossword puzzle.  I know it’s coming.

 

While the laser experience was disappointing, there was an upside.  I was forced out of golf and found a new passion: running.  I often feel thankful for how things turned out.  I probably would never have run the Boston Marathon if everything had gone according to plan.  And I would probably still be flailing away on the golf course.

Bent frames.  Broken frames.  Sore behind the ears.  Sore on the bridge of my nose.  We glasses wearers understand all of this.  And there are lots of us still around.  Our entire church choir wears glasses.  Even prayer will not give you good eyesight.

I walk to work every day.  I can no longer see clearly into car windows as they pass me.  So, I just wave at everybody, just like the politicians do at election time.

The upside is that motorists who gesture in a less than polite manner get a friendly wave in return.