My Glasses

Say something about my glasses.  I dare you.  Once, when I was 7, I broke an aluminum baseball bat over another kid's cast (yes, he already had a broken arm) because he called me "four eyes".  He had it coming.  Go ahead; make fun of someone because of a weakness, you can't help it.  It's innate.

Later, in second grade, my moniker reared its head again, this time with much different results.  I cried.  Standing in line for the school bell; I couldn't help it.  I couldn't help that I had stripes taped to the middle of my lenses to keep my eyes from pointing inward.  I'd worn glasses for longer than I could remember (since I was two) and now I couldn't hold it in any longer.

I tried to explain.  "I'm farsighted"  I said.  "Oh, so you can't see far away?" someone twitted.  "No (you dumb-ass), I can't see close-up," I replied, now getting emotional.  "Then why do you need glasses?" the grilling continued. Now completely balling and wanting desperately to end this discussion, "because I have a lazy eye."  (It turns out that I have a condition called Amblyopia, which I found out quite by chance sometime last week;  but you wouldn't care.  You can't see past my glasses.) Continuing to try to explain this to other 7-year-olds was proving fruitless.  Catching wind of the unraveling situation now developing at the back of Room 106, Mrs Hobson finally stepped in; I was a snotty, blubbering mess, but I had stemmed the bleeding for now.

Fifth grade was really the last time I ever heard about it.  Maybe everyone had gotten used to it.  Maybe everyone had outgrown it.  Maybe it was the fact that I punched a kid's face in on the school bus for telling me my eyes were all messed up.  "Now your face is all messed up", and nobody said shit after that.  No one could; I got contacts in seventh grade.

It turns out that contacts were not a good fit for someone with my hygienic habits.  I never took care of them.  I slept in them.  Contacts are terrible.  They suffocate your eyes.  The blood vessels in your eyes grow and expand while attempting to get more oxygen.  They grow across your pupil and blur your vision.  I didn't need them.  My self confidence had grown and I realized that glass could be cool.  Elvis Costello was cool.

I got some big, thick black framed glasses, just like Elvis wears.  Just like the BCGs that marines wear; and I rocked 'em.  They became my trademark. They became part of me and I was only reminded of the pain they had once caused me during drunken collegiate wrestling matches fueled by testosterone and alcohol.  Slapped from my face, they'd skid across the floor, and for a brief moment, time moved in slow motion.  My weakness was exposed.  My glasses, skirting a midst stomping feet and falling bodies, had to be saved.  I needed them.  I had become inextricably linked to something that, for so long, had caused me so much pain.  Now I wouldn't live without them.

Couldn't live without them (though they effectively do nothing to correct my Amblyopia; I rarely use my left eye at all--to it's detriment).  They have become a staple of my face.  I like my glasses and I think I'm going to keep them.