It was sometime in the fourth grade that my ten-year-old nose found itself cohabitating with a pair of spectacles. At least that’s the year they started showing up in school pictures, little pink cat eyes that made me look perpetually shell-shocked. I hated wearing them, so finally in high school vanity prevailed over common sense. The glasses were banished to a dresser drawer even though I was extremely near-sighted.

Not surprisingly, the beauty quotient was negatively impacted by an inability to make meaningful eye contact with cute guys. (Or anyone, for that matter.) I never realized that the opposite sex was misinterpreting my major myopia as a lack of interest. Fortunately in college I stopped living in denial of perpetual F’s on eye exams and started wearing glasses again. (Which remarkably, was followed by dates. Go figure.)

Later, eye surgery gave me the freedom to go prescription-free; it was incredible to wake up in the morning able to read the alarm clock! Ironically, eight years later my eyes started to change again. If you’re over forty you know what I mean. And that eventually took me back to square one and glasses 24/7. Continue reading