Any Old Actress

Stephen made me wonder about how excited I was to get new glasses. It’s really a strange level of enthusiasm. It’s even stranger when I think about how vigorously I’ve hated glasses for the last 6 years. And I’ve decided that my sheer joy at getting brand new glasses is directly connected to that hatred. It’s about winning.

See, last time I had glasses, I was 15. I was skinny, and awkward and gawky and self conscious and miserable. I was about 10 pounds underweight, and on a tiny person, that results in looking like a Holocaust Survivor (Mom’s words not mine). There was really nothing wrong with my glasses, but from my uniquely adolescent point of view, they were hideous. I’d never been so relieved as when I got contacts. The peace of mind was totally worth the discomfort of acclimating to hard lenses. Which was serious torture at first. And that’s a pretty universal experience. Haven’t all of use been teenaged/adolescent and hated everything about our persons/lives and wanted nothing more than to crawl under a rock and hide? The human experience right? Not such a big deal, and for me it didn’t last more ‘n a year, so not too bad overall. The problem is just… that phase is antithetical to my personality. I spent my childhood much the same way I’m spending my 20’s (I got a 4 pack of Play-Doh for my 12th birthday and went to Chuck E. Cheese - for my 19th birthday I got a DBZ t-shirt from the little boys’ section and a Vegeta action figure). Wearing jeans and superhero t-shirts, playing with beat up toys, and generally enjoying life in a state of noisy enthusiasm - zero self-consciousness and only a little bit self-aware. So, it’s a little embarrassing now to know I could have ever been so ridiculous and self-conscious. Like I should have known better or something. And I feel like I missed all the fun of wearing glasses - the colours, the shapes, the textures, the frames. I feel like I lost some game that never had clear rules.

So this time I’m wearing glasses my way. I’m not all subdued and hideous feeling - I could wear bug glasses and still love ‘em ‘cause it’s my choice. I’m in control now, wearing what I want, what I like, without regard to “appearances”. Because there’s nothing that makes me more unhappy with myself than to let embarrassment, or the world at large determine my choices. I’ve won this time around. And my burgundy (exactly matches my favourite lipstick & nail polish), super-nerd, plastic frames with just a sorta-suggestion of a cat’s eye shape, are all about that unwavering conviction that when I wear what I want, I look… damn fine.

Besides, these are a million times easier on my chronic allergies. The up-to-date scrip has got to alleviate headaches (at least, those that aren’t spawned by congestion). I can stay up late or watch TV without the contact washing ritual. The specs will always match my toenail polish (which tends not to change or chip). And the just-right plastic does an excellent job of hiding how thick my right lens is. Man, my right eyeball… It’s super near-sighted, and I think there’s an astigmatism in there too. One of these days I’ll finagle some lasik. Hopefully I’ll get the myopia fixed sometime before I start getting old people eyes. I do not want to deal with the compound problems of near-sightedness and far-sightedness at the same time. Talk about headaches.

Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed the snow we had over the weekend. It was pretty melty Sunday, and by yesterday it was all gone, but on Saturday I got to sled down the hill. Of course the board didn’t work. First I fell down, then I sat down, then I gave up and dug out the inner tube we used on the lake. It was an exhilarating trip down the hill. Leaning to compensate for the sharp curves. And then I hit the patch of ice covering gravel at the bottom of the drive. Totally lost control, went sliding off the inner tube, and thoroughly scraped up my butt. Much fun. I can’t wait until it snows again.