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| Blue National Health Specs |
It's the age old question. At least its an old one for me. After childhood torture with blue ones. early teenage trauma with square ones, late teenage torture with BIG ones, and then big round ones....until slowly but surely, they transformed into something a bit more socially acceptable. Meanwhile, I battled with broken arms, lost screws, nose slippage, steamy vision, vanity traumas and moments of loss. Yes.
Spectacle wearing has had it's moments! Yet after all these years I still do, despite the obvious lure of laser eye surgery or contact lenses. But every couple of years, the questions raises it's head once again. To spectacle or not to spectacle, that is the question?
Eye surgery to one side, the option of contact lenses is one I have tried a few times. My first journey started with the hard ones. Oh my god. The cleaning, the rubbing, the fiddling, it frankly did my head in! That and the fact they were so uncomfortable and felt like bits of plastic in my eyes, didn't particularly help with the perseverance factor. They eventually dried up in their pot, and when I eventually made peace with the fact that it was a wasted one hundred odd pounds, I gladly binned them. Then I tried again. This time I could go soft and monthly, technology had moved on and my odd shaped eyeballs could be reasonably satisfied. They went soft and not-monthly as I ended up wearing them so infrequently. A couple of years later, I decided to try yet again. Third time lucky I thought. This time round, I was all or nothing. This meant, I would wear them all night and wake up with them still in. This was brought to a swift close after my birthday night out. I tried over and over to get one of my lenses out. I kept pinching and pinching and pinching. But still the damn thing stubbornly stuck to my dried out eyeball. Or so I thought. I found it in the morning. Dried up and rock hard on my bedroom floor, and I looked like someone had poked me in the eye several times. Oh hang on. They did! I have never worn them since.
A friend of mine - lets call her Peach - will probably be having a little "dry heave" if she is reading this. She has quite strong feelings on contact lenses. Those feelings are very precise - No, Won't and Don't. The thought of poking around in her eyes literally sends her funny to the core, and it is the one thing on her donor card that she is not prepared to give away! Dead or not, no one touches the eyes OK ! (Although, it's also worth noting that she also has a rather strange aversion to Freddie Mercury or any form of Freddie Mercury lookalike, so not sure just how balanced that particular view might be!) Meanwhile, from the same gang of friends, Bendy and Curly just pop them in and go (because they're worth it!). But Smell, whilst a big fan, does grumble about extra wrinkles in the under eye area, from pulling them about, getting the lenses in. (Don't worry though. I have sold her some cream for that!) It seems the general consensus is that lenses sort of start out being a form of vanity or for sports, but eventually evolves into a habit and a convenience (You can open the oven door and not get steamed up).
Perhaps that has always been my problem? I have never wore the lenses enough to get to this stage. In fact I have always found them an inconvenience! Dry eyes in air conditioning, trauma's just before you leave the house trying to get them in, worrying about whether you put the left in the right eye or the right in the left! It has never been "pop and go" for me, that's for sure! But what about from a vision perspective? Bendy always stands by the fact, her vision is so much better with contact lenses. Curly and Smell said the same. Whereas I had never felt like that with my contacts in, my vision always seemed just a little bit worse than with my spectacles. In fairness, I had been informed that my astigmatism may mean imperfect sight with lenses, but it's really not fair - because Bendy suffers from odd shaped eyeballs too!
Of course, potentially there is no need to try and overcome this contact lens trauma. Spectacles have slowly but surely become trendy, a look, an image and in some cases, a must-have accessory. Alan Carr has a "Spexy tour" and a New Years Eve "Spec-tacular", Gok has launched his own range and Chris Evans...well he just wouldn't be the same without his distinct spectacle style. Although, having said that, I am sure it was probably not always the case of being "cool" for them to be speccy, just as it wasn't for me....
It started off OK; Everyone made a fuss when I had the eye operation - I got given some cool presents; The blue national health specs were best of a bad bunch at the time - but they were blue at least (tom-boy) my mate had pink (sap!). (Although, of course the picture evidence says they were anything other than OK - photos only a mother could love). But, the reality is, at the time, wearing glasses were a royal pain in the bum. The patches over one lens (don't ask), lenses dropping out in the playground, footballs in the face making them wonky, sliding down your nose when you were out running and playing. Total pain! And then there was the meanness that helped develop "The Fear". I am not talking the usual "four eyes" etc, I didn't suffer too badly with all of that. No, this was actually the fear of taking them off altogether.
Yes,"The Fear", was a long embedded dread of spectacle removal in public. Let's face it kids are mean. People were so used to seeing me in spectacles, that they felt the need to comment when I removed them. "You look SO weird without your glasses". "Your eyes SO look tiny". "Oh my god you look better with them on". If it wasn't bad enough, that I was as thin as a whippet, and had big, out of control hair....I now also looked "weird"
without my spectacles! And that is "weird"
without the huge, square, metal "things" sitting at a dodgy angle on the end of my nose. I looked better
with them? Crikes. A complex was born. Anyway, I am not bitter. Promise. I (mostly) got over "The Fear" at about eighteen. I think this was a combined effort of theatre performance and going to the pub!
However, I'll be frank, its not just kids that can't resist commenting. There appears to be a deep seated "spectacle curiosity" in adults, that I have never, ever understood.. Now, I don't know whether this just happens to me. Or whether, it mainly happens to me because I am a daily wearer. But, nonetheless, it happens. Some people, just have this insatiable desire to know:
a/ what you look like without them
and
b/ whether they can try them on
Now. This wouldn't be so bad. But, this is invariably followed by a head cocking to one side gawping at you - clearly trying to decide which is weirder - on/off on/off on/off? Followed by, popping the specs on and probably exclaiming loudly for an audience; "I can't see bloody a thing they are SO strong" followed by "Do my eyes look like milk bottles?" and "how on earth do you see out of these things?" (It's called a personal prescription my dear) This is then typically followed by some face pulling, head frowning and eventually spectacles are thrust back, disappointed. I am not sure what they expect to happen when I take them off (Turn into Supergirl?), or indeed when they tried them on. (to enter Narnia?) but nonetheless I think they come away from the experience dis-satisfied and I come away, generally insulted. Eventually, it all became a bit too boring and I started refusing people the "Jenipen Spectacle Adventure" some time ago. Sometimes politely. Other times not.
So I guess you are damned if you do and damned if you don't! Contacts and and glasses are clearly a pain in equal measure. Or pleasure? Despite my apparent grumblings, it's all tongue in cheek, because no matter what, my face attire is a talking point, and a bit like Gok, Alan and Chris (and Deidre!) they are also a distinguishing feature. I am the tall, blond, bird with the glasses. That's how I am known and as I book my next optician appointment, I know that's the way it's going to stay.
Who wants to touch their eyeball anyway?
