Guys Do TOO Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses, and No, You May NOT Try Them On

My glasses are seriously thrashed. I'm soooo not kidding. My delicate, aubergine, semi-rimless spectacles have suffered being grabbed and bent by my son when he was a baby, broken by said baby, soldered by a dubious technician (and unskillfully repainted over the solder, which is now peeling), broken again on the stem-joint by yours truly (and taped enough times that I'm getting good at it), and scratched in general. Oh, they have also suffered being repeatedly slept on and smushed.

You might assume I'd be dying to buy new glasses.

Believe me, I've tried. I shopped and shopped, noting special discounts and trying on hundreds of frames until my son began to balk if we so much as came within 200 feet of a glasses store. I actually spent over $300 on a jazzy little rimless number, only to have a clueless employee bend them all out of shape before admitting she'd never fitted glasses before. I discovered there was also a weird reflection in the lenses due a combination of construction on my high prescription, and, fed up, I got my money back. And I have lost my glasses gusto.

Glasses have always been a big deal for me. Well, since second grade, anyway. After getting my first pair of glasses as a seven-year-old, I was surprised to discover that I could see leaves! Blades of grass! The shag rug! (Hey, it was the seventies.) The blackboard! The clock!

Today I'm working up the nerve to order new glasses. Nothing flashy -- just your basic pair. You may ask why I'm hedging, especially given my five-year endurance of crappy glasses. Well, I suspect I've enjoyed having a bit more money in my savings account. Or maybe it's more fun to imagine what the new glasses will look like, instead of getting the actual glasses and getting them fitted somewhere and hoping they really do work out. Or maybe I'm afraid I'll wreck the new pair. Or maybe I'm putting too many expectations on the new pair to solve more problems than they could possibly handle. Hmm.

I'll admit that I do get pretty crabby when I first try on a new pair of glasses. See, I have a high prescription (I'm unbelievably nearsighted) and it takes me a while to get used to a new pair because I wear them all the time and each pair has a different set of distortions for me to adjust to. I often get headaches for the first day or two after bringing home a new pair of glasses, although I seem to recall having really great luck with my current pair five years ago, and being able to wear them comfortably right away. I'm going to hope for the same with the new pair I'm ordering today.

But just in case, you might want to steer clear of me right after I get them. Until the crabbiness subsides, I mean. ;^)