| Wednesday, February 23, 2005 |
| I Have Not Got my Specs With Me |
I sat on my glasses today. It was just like I'd always imagined it would be. It wasn't loud. It didn't hurt. Everything moved in slow motion as I opened the door. Drops of shining water--melted frost fell from the handle as I let go and it snapped back inside the door. As I stepped up and slid onto the seat, the glasses felt almost soft and only the muffled sound of bending metal and of lenses popping from their frames could be heard. It was as if I knew it were to happen before the moment arrived, but was helpless to stop the great cycle once it had been put in motion.
My eyes began to grow dim while I was in Switzerland. I remember walking into "la post" there, and by the light of the room I could barely make the words out in my head. Squinting didn't help much. I think it was that I didn't know french very well.
In any case, when I got home, I waited a year or two and then decided to do something about my waining sight.
Contacts.
I didn't like glasses, and I didn't want to look like someone who wore glasses when I was wearing glasses. So contacts seemed like the perfect solution.
I spent about thirty minutes in the optomologist's room- trying to put soft pieces of plastic over my eyes. The nurse probably came in four or five times to make sure I was doing alright, or to see what the problem was. Finally, she put them in for me and made me promise to keep trying once I got home.
No offense to my Asian friends...but I sort of have Asian eyes. See, they just don't open very wide--and I know what you're saying: "Oh, just use your fingers and pry them open." Well I've tried that. And I've let other people try it, too. Their smiles recoil, and a gasp or an almost audible hush falls over the crowd as they realise my eyes really won't get bigger. You can stretch at them and pull up my eyelids, and you can pry back my eye lashes with fingers and instruments...but the fact remains: my eyes are too small for contacts.
So I bought glasses, and I wore them every once in a while. There's an old saying that goes "Mine eyes are dim, I cannot see, I have not got my specs' with me. I have not got my spectales with me." They are. I can't. And now I don't. They're bent. Bent along with my spirits and the hope I once had of ever seeing clearly the things I should at a medium to long distance. |
posted by Brett Crockett @ 6:00 PM   |
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