Specs

I had these glasses once before...

I first learned I needed corrective eyewear on September 11, 2001. No kidding, because while you folks were watching CNN, I was renewing my driver's license. Renewing car tags, too. It was still morning, so they hadn't had a chance to figure out just how perfect an opportunity this was for a government office to take the rest of the day off. In fact, I remember hearing Dan Verbeck announce on the radio that, 'Again, the twin towers are gone.'



I thought, Bullshit they're gone. If you could fell them, the rubble would be thirty stories high.

But when I took my eye exam at the DMV, I read the line the dude asked me to, and I asked, That the 20/20 line?



Nope, the 20/20 line was two below that. I had the minimum 20/40 the state requires for driving, but the 20/15 eyes I had when I was eighteen somehow evaporated.

So after going to the eye doctor, I got my first spectacles. I had always thought I wanted horn rims if I had to wear glasses, and they didn't really have anything like that. But I noticed, trying on frames, that I noticed the frames. Not used to glasses, I was very aware of the weight, the peripheral presence.



So I went the other way. Way the other way.

I picked out a set of rimless frames and inquired about the possibility of round lenses. They showed me some ovals and rounded rectangles and I said, No, round as in circular.

And they obliged. The lenses come as circles, they cut the shape after they grind the prescription in. In my case, a 54mm blank was about right. The result is feather light, understated and distinctive. It's also expensive because you have to go with polycarbonate lenses to have enough strength for rimless frames, and I let them sell me the anti-glare coating and the scratch resistance and so on.




At the time I go those first specs, though, I had a very keen benefit where I worked, a reimbursement for eyeglasses up to $300 per calendar year. So I got my high-dollar eccentric glasses for more or less free. The next calendar year I got the backup pair I've been wearing the past two or three years since the rimless circles got irreparably damaged, and my prescription Oakleys.

The next year, the vision benefit was axed, and until last week, I coasted on what I had.

Until last Friday, I couldn't find my glasses. I'm such a creature of habit, I couldn't figure it. There are only two places I ever put my glasses. My dresser is one of these places. My ironing board is the other. I never get my laundry caught up enough to take the ironing board down, so it's become just another piece of furniture in my bedroom. If I'm closer to it than the dresser when I take my glasses off to go to bed, that's where they'll be.

I looked on the floor around these two items, but nope. Bermuda Triangulated.

I used this as the prompt to actually go to an eye doctor, knowing I'd find my glasses as soon as I got home. Which I did (at the foot of my bed, wrapped up in a comforter, go figure).

I tried those horn rims, they make them these days. Can't stand them.

But today, my new specs came in. Wish I still had that vision reimbursement benefit...