Not four eyes! Amblyopia, stupid!

I have been wearing glasses since I was three. The only advantage in that is that, at three, I didn't have to choose the frames. In fact, in 1960-something there wasn't much choice. There were mini-cat's eye replicas of grown up glasses in various shades of pink or blue for girls, and shrunken Clark Kent goggles in black or tortoiseshell for boys. Mine were not enhanced by the piece of brown paper gummed over my 'good' eye.

How I hated that patch. I hated glasses. I hated the pictures on  paddle pop sticks I had to move back and forth in front of my eyes in a vain attempt to go cross-eyed. I hated the cheery orthoptist and her lions that never went in their cages. I hated the eye doctor with his refraction contraption that ever threatened to trip me up on the 'better' or 'worse' questions and leave me sightless for the next year, and I still do. I hated his stinging, blinding eye drops. But most of all, I hated being called 'four eyes' or 'goggle eyes'!  And I still never remember to take off my glasses before opening the oven, and we're talking the best part of 50 years now.

In retrospect, I have the patch, the glasses, the paddle pop stick, the lions and all the other paraphernalia to thank for being able to see as well as I now can. I have no binocular vision, but my 'bad' eye is not blind. I have the bullies at school to thank for still not being able to catch a ball, and I thank Dorothy Parker for the fact I squinted my way glasses-less through so many teenage parties I still don't know what it means to 'make eyes' at someone, because I could never see that level of detail.

But to this day, the hardest part of wearing glasses remains choosing the frames. Today there is nothing but choice and recently I stumbled upon an innovative use for my iPhone: taking photos of all the choices so you can email friends and family for an opinion. So now I have four possible choices, and four different opinions! Whah! 

The Fashionista was quite specific. Of these, she said, "They're cool, and that colour looks really great on you, but I don't know how I feel about the sliced-out-side line things ... it's perhaps a bit graphic/spacey, it seems to say 'I think I'm a 'cool' 49-year old', which you are, but you don't need glasses like this to say it, perhaps. That said, these would be my second pick."

I did ask.