an eye for an eye. the eyes have it. eye, eye, captain!

i've worn glasses since i was like 9 or 10, but of course my vision was poor before that. as is generally the way with these things, it took having a schoolteacher tell my parents that i was having trouble getting close enough to the blackboard to copy down my work before anyone thought to have my eyes checked. upon donning my initial pair of spectacles, i had that typical reaction about being able to see the leaves on the trees. i thought everyone saw the great fluffy mass of green atop the brown trunk - like a kindergartner's drawing of a tree. turns out, that's the ur-tree. the actual real live trees have leaves, and yes, you should be able to see them from quite a distance away. who knew?


this morning i went to the optometrist for the umpty billionth time since that first time. when i was a kid, they took me to an eye doctor called "lashlee"... lash... eye... no fooling. anyhoo, now my dr is called taylor and i believe dr lashlee has gone to that great eye chart in the sky.

eye checking hasn't changed in all these umpty billion years. the machines are the same. the charts are the same. the questions are the same. except lashlee used to do "a... or b...? a... or b...?" and taylor does "one... or two...? two... or three...?" but they are doing the same thing. i am always like, whoa nelly slow down! it's not that simple. i need some time to discern which is clearer. it's like they already know the answer and they're just moving me towards it. what if my eyes contain a surprise this time, eh? slow down!


dr taylor suggested i try these daily wear contacts. unless they are like 50¢ per pair, i will not be using them. i have worn this pair since i got them from her this morning and i will agree they are comfy, but jeez, who can afford to wear a new pair each day? that's got to be expensive. plus, think of all that waste. pretty soon, our landfills will be brimming with lenses.

i wear glasses most of the time and put contacts in just for sports. one typically blinks about half as much while staring at the computer screen as one does while not doing that, and i star at a computer screen about 6 hours per day, so i can't reasonably expect to wear contacts all that time. you have to blink while you have the contacts in or they will dry up, ergo they get more dry in front of the computer, ergo they are less comfy that way.


my old man went to see about having his eyes lasik'd. he's not a candidate, for some reason which i cannot recall. thick corneas or somesuch. i am probably a candidate, but i can't bring myself to even check into it. what if it messes up? that's got to happen at least part of the time. my eyesight now is not good, but it's correctable. what if i end up with uncorrectable vision? egad, what a nightmare.

so i will be getting some new glasses soon, and it looks like the ones at the eye doctor's office will be approximately umpty billion dollars, and that's after the insurance pays its part. i think i will check at walmart.