Four eyes
By David Delaney
I have very bad eyesight, so I wear glasses. I needed to qualify the second statement with the first, because there are people who wear glasses by choice.
Glasses supposedly make a person look “intelligent” so you get the occasional bimbo/meathead affecting them in an effort to look like they’ve read books without pictures in them. That annoys me a little, because it’s a choice I don’t have.
I’m not complaining, having met a few blind people over the years. But I’ve also knocked the glasses off my face on occasion, and it’s really humiliating to have to get down on my knees and feel around for them because I can’t see well enough to find them visually.
For a seriously myopic person, it’s scary how helpless you become without your glasses …
Having been both clumsy and poor over the years, I’ve been forced several times to wear glasses held together with sticky tape, a situation which is apparently hilarious to people with good vision.
My last pair had plastic frames, which I repaired with superglue before they were finally written off by a cricket ball which I managed to bat into my face. I was allowed to retire hurt but not out, in case you’re wondering, so at least my average didn’t suffer.
I wore contacts for years. They’re expensive to buy, but no more than a decent set of specs. The real expense is buying the overpriced cleaning and storage solutions, and it never ends.
There are good things about contacts, but there are also plenty of negatives. Dust particles may be incredibly tiny, but trust me on this: you don’t want one between your contact lens and your eyeball. Let alone an eyelash.
As for laser eye surgery: ten thousand dollars. Any other questions?
I didn’t consciously decide to go back to glasses full-time after my contact lens years. For a long time I wore glasses at my day jobs, and contacts for anything social.
What finally killed contact lenses as an option for me was a bespectacled redhead named Bridget. She looked fine
in glasses, and had an impressive disdain for affectation. Whoever’s loving her now is a lucky man.
Anyway, she proved to me that glasses don’t prevent sexiness, and it was nice for a couple of years to have a lover that shared the bespectacled lifestyle.
Nowadays, I just wear the damn things, and if they happen to make me look more like a Dickensian clerk than a rock star, too bad. I’m short sighted, big deal.
Despite not particularly enjoying them, I don’t resent my glasses like I used to. My current pair have high-tech super-thin light-weight lenses – it’s worth paying the extra money for the upgrades.
They’re aging a bit, so I’m thinking about replacing them this year. I’m also seriously considering getting some prescription sunnies. I’ve come to terms with my four-eyed-ness.
And as for girls who wear glasses … well, I’m sure you can guess my feelings on that question.
Dave Delaney is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.
Building a Better Bloke 
I concur with the girls in glasses thing. Long been a fetish of mine. Apparently there’s a whole genre of porn devoted to it called “Spetacular”.
As a long time wearer of glasses, I too have come to terms with it. In fact, I find myself looking ‘weird’ and feeling ‘naked’ if I don’t wear them!
Girls (the ones you’d bother associating with) don’t care whether guys wear glasses or not. Promise.
I have been wearing both glasses and contacts for 30 years. I buy my contacts on line relatively cheaply. I pay about $50 for thirty disposable couriered. Obviates the need for cleaning as you throw away at the end of the day. I have been known to sleep in them!
Try clearlycontacts.com.au
I’ve needed to wear glasses since I was 12. I didn’t for a few years and thought squinting was good enough. This affected my eyesight seriously.
In school for a few years I wore contact lenses. They made my eys red and most of the stoner kids thought I was always stoned. I ditched the contacts the week after school ended and kept with glasses.
A few years ago I decided to give contacts another go thinking that the decade in between meant that technology would have advanced and they were able to make a contact lens that would suit the curve of my eyeball (the reason behind the redness).
A few weeks in and the redness returned – brought on by sleeping in them one night as I wasn’t at home and had nowhere to put them. A year or so after that I wore them when I went paintballing (new ones as I bought the 2 week disposable ones) – the redness returned in less than a day.
I subsequently ditched the contacted lens idea.
I need to go for another test and will wait until I see a 2-for-1 offer and buy new frames and lenses.
Glasses don’t bother me. They are a necessity when your eyesight is -6.5/20
People are conditioned to the sight of others wearing glasses, not surprising given that a large percentage of the population own a pair. Obviously specs are a necessity but that doesn’t mean that they don’t look inherently ridiculous. A couple of pieces of glass wrapped round with wire and perched on your protuberance. They must have seemed very comical when they first appeared. No wonder kids, those little divining rods of taste, mutter the affectionate: “4-eyes”, along with “fatty”, “smelly” etc as appropriate. Kids do this because they tell the truth: glasses are unintentionally yet intrinsically comical and their wearer is a clown.
Glasses are no more comical than ties or umbrellas, and a lot more useful than either. We put up with the sight of each other riding around in metal boxes all day, or speaking into pieces of plastic or hammering at the keys on a keyboard. All inherently clowny in their own way. I’m pretty sure the novelty of glasses (the spectacle of spectacles?) has worn off by now. I’m sure most non-glasses-wearing people don’t have to stifle a secret chuckle every time they see someone sporting optical enhancements. But maybe I’m wrong.
The fact remains that, as David points out, a lot of people choose to wear glasses to change people’s perception of them. And not just clowns.
I’ve worn glasses myself since I was at high school. Contact lenses are useful for playing sports or going to the sort of gigs I used to go to when I was younger, but I like wearing my glasses most of the time because, as well as stopping me bumping into things, they help to make me look like less of a thug.
I think most successful clowns have used glasses as a prop: think Chaplin, Groucho, Austin Powers etc, I mean the glasses definitely enhance the buffoonery of Eddie the Eagle do they not?
Yes, glasses are such an accepted part of life that we think we ignore them, however I believe our subconscious does have a bit of a cackle at them.
Now where did I put those big floppy shoes?