Tales of a Vision Impaired Boy

Nearsightedness been a part of my life since I was in 2nd grade. Whether it was because I watched too much TV and played too many video games (my mom's theory), or because my parents made me do too much reading and math problems (my theory), or just plain heredity from my dad (the logical scientific theory that makes the most sense), the fact is that I've had to live about 2/3 of my life needing either glasses or contacts, and it sucks.

For the lucky people out there who have never had to wear glasses or contacts, I envy and hate you. The rest of you mortals, I'm sure you feel my pain. I've decided to share all of my nearsightedness-related sob stories in this blog.

From about 2nd grade through junior high or so, I had glasses, no contacts yet. If you go back and look at my old class pictures, you can see the progression through the years of my awesome style in eyewear. It started with the old, clunky, super nerdy plastic frame. Not only was it the most uncool color possible for a 8 year old boy (a sort of translucent light brownish beige), but it was also so huge that it covered more than half of my face. At least, if nothing else, it was a super durable frame, as I think I still have that original pair sitting somewhere in my room in Darien.

Don't underestimate "durability", either, because later on I would learn the full value of a frame that doesn't easily break. After one or two more pairs of ugly plastic frames, me and my parents finally got with the program and decided to move up to the metal wire-rimmed glasses. Score one for the little playa Joe and the elementary school ladies! But actually, my pimp factor did not improve very much, due to the fact that I had these super thick lenses to go with them, thus obscuring my pretty eyes and also making the frames look way too tiny as well.

In addition to this, whatever aesthetic benefits remained from the "upgrade" to wire-rim frames were quickly lost when I broke them playing basketball. When I say broke, I don't mean bent, I mean snapped in half where the bridge is. Now, instead of sucking up the cost and buying a new frame, my dad decided he had a better solution to fix my glasses (this story is very typical of my dad, by the way, and I love him very much regardless).

His solution was to go to Venture (the hip store in Darien those days before Walmart came along, now defunct), buy a cheap soldering kit, and solder my frames together. Yes that's right, I walked around town for about a couple years, wearing glasses that were soldered together at one side of the bridge. If you don't know what that looks like, just picture a big blob of melted aluminum at the part where the middle piece meets the oval part that holds the lense. I'd post a picture if I had one handy, but I don't. For now, just trust me when I say that it wasn't a pretty sight. Not that it mattered much... actually now that I think about it, my ghetto-looking glasses probably went pretty well with the rest of my look, with my tight sweatpants, cheap shoes from Payless, and purple bookbag.

To make matters worse about my soldered glasses, they didn't exactly hold up very well to the bumps and bruises that come with being in 5th and 6th grade. Every once in a while, they would snap again at that spot, at which point I'd have to go to my dad to slop even more solder there to hold it. I remember on more than one occasion having to go through half a day of school after breaking them in recess, holding the two separated pieces of my glasses in place with my hands the whole time, just so my blind ass could see the board. Needless to say, I looked and felt like quite the idiot on those days.

Then there was the time I was at Camp Edwards in 6th grade, when I got hit in the face playing tetherball. My glasses flew off, I couldn't see anything, and all I could feel was blinding pain in my eyes. They took me to the nurse, and when some of the tears finally cleared enough to see where I was, the first thing I asked was "are my glasses broken?" The nurse's reaction is one that I'll always remember: "kid, you just got your face smashed in pretty hard, your left eye is swollen completely shut right now, and you're worried about your glasses?" If nothing else, what a testament to how severely Chinese parents drill in their kids the importance of saving money.

Eventually, I moved on to contact lenses. (By the way, for anyone who is wondering, I'm pretty sure those soldered glasses are still sitting on a shelf in my room next to the huge plastic ones - in two pieces, no less). Again, it was a case where I enjoyed a very slight improvement looks-wise, but mostly found that it was just a continuation of all the frustrating experiences that come along with having bad eyesight.

Back then, with the contact lens industry not yet having been deregulated in our economy, contacts were a lot more expensive than they are today. Also, disposables were not very popular/common, as they are now. As a result, losing a contact was serious business. And boy, did I lose my share of contacts. There's too many stories involving times when I lost or almost lost my contacts to write about in one blog entry, but I will say that the most common way I lost my contacts was when I threw them away myself in a moment of absentmindedness. I lost at least about 5 or 6 pairs simply by rinsing out and dumping the contents of my contact lens case down the sink, when I had just finished cleaning them at the end of the day. Really makes me kick myself for being so dumb, especially when I think about the agonizing times I spent trying to find a lost contact in the family room rug or underneath my desk during class.

I also screwed myself over during the first few months of wearing contacts by not having common sense. For whatever reason, I treated the disinfecting solution and saline as if it were liquid gold, so I cleaned my lenses using literally individual drops of solution. Obviously, this was not getting the job done. On my next visit to the eye doctor, he took a look at my lenses and was like "these are completely covered with protein and enzyme deposits, don't you clean them every day?" Then he showed me how to clean them using a steady stream of solution to rinse it thoroughly enough, and I felt like quite the retard for my meticulous drop-by-drop technique. I was like "hmmmm.... no wonder my eyes burn so much".

My stupidity and absentmindedness don't end there. One time, I spent about 10 minutes searching every corner of my house trying to find my glasses so I could take out my contacts, only to eventually realize that I took out my contacts earlier in the day and I was already wearing my glasses. STUPID.... And just the other day after playing cards at Dave's house, I came home and started to try taking out my contacts, with my glasses on. I actually reached under my glasses, nudging them out of the way to reach for my contacts without for a second stopping to think that hey, if I'm wearing my glasses I'm probably not wearing my contacts. Of course, I realized it soon enough when I noticed that something hurt like hell, and guess what, it was me pinching my own eyeball. STUPID AND ABSENTMINDED...

Well, what originally inspired me to write this whole long thing was that I was thinking about how nice it would be to get that laser eye surgery thing and never have to worry about any of that stuff again. I'd say that if anyone needs or deserves it, it'd be me. Then again, stupidity comes from within, it just manifested itself through my experiences with contacts. Even if I got the surgery, I'd probably just find new ways to be a dumbass.

But anyways, I think I'm gonna start a little fund for myself to get the vision correction thing done in a few years. I'd do it now if I wasn't saving money for a house, and I'm also hoping they will make more breakthroughs in that field during these next few years, that would make it cheaper and have less side effects.