VANITY is a powerful force in Vision Correction and it causes many people to either not wear vision correction or feel very apprehensive about wearing glasses. Usually, Vanity affects those of the Female persuasion more strongly than Males, but not always. Some years ago, one of the Eyescene members, Macrae, posted his actual experiences. They are well written and pretty funny to look back on. It was serious to him, but Macrae has a very healthy sense of humor and is able to laugh at himself.
Julian, a long time member of ES, compiled Macrae’s posts into “Macrae’s Story”. I edited it slightly to hopefully make it easier to read by BOLDING the poster’s name. Here it is.
Macrae’s story
This is non-fiction. The posts are reproduced from EyeScene, with light editing. Many people enjoyed Macrae’s account of getting glasses and finding he needed to wear them full time, not to mention his two brothers!
On the ES New Glasses thread
Macrae 12 Feb 2007, 18:36 I got my first glasses less than a week ago, still going through the self-conscious phase - it feels very strange to have face-to-face conversations with people while wearing glasses. It seems like wearing glasses for just a few days has suddenly weakened my non-glasses vision. The whole experience is a little disconcerting.
Cactus Jack 12 Feb 2007, 19:08
Macrae, A very normal experience most of us have been through it. In a few more days, you will not notice them except when you are not wearing them. It will help, if you just decide that wearing them is normal. It is unlikely that a few days wear has changed your Rx. You are just getting used to seeing very clearly and your brain doesn’t like not seeing clearly and effortlessly. Do you mind telling us your age and your Rx? C.
Macrae 12 Feb 2007, 19:50 Thanks for the encouragement. I am 40, and the prescription is +1.75 -.75 in each eye. Certain of my coworkers had been needling me for months about my arms not seeming to be long enough lately, so I went to get the reading glasses that I thought come with being 40, but I was told that I might want to wear them more than just for reading and will probably need bifocals before long. Part of the reason I’m having some trouble with conversing while wearing glasses is that things are still looking like warpy parallelograms, and it’s hard to talk to people when they’re looking warpy. I’m told by the same amused coworkers that I’ll get over that and things will go back to having square corners. I hope they are right. They seem to be enjoying this.
Julian 14 Feb 2007, 03:45 Macrae: Your amused so-workers ‘seem to be enjoying this’…I get the impression that in a way you are too. Just keep your sense of humour (and keep your specs on!) and your brain will adjust to receiving proper-shaped images from your eyes.
Macrae 14 Feb 2007, 09:27 Thanks Julian. Well I’m not sure that I’m enjoying this. I feel a little awkward wearing glasses. It’s not the end of the world and I realize it’s inevitable. But at the same time I feel a little like the self-conscious schoolkid who has to put his glasses on in class for the first time. I’m sure that in a few days the novelty will wear off amongst the people at work and I’ll feel like glasses have been part of me forever. Just not quite there yet today.
On the Hyperopia and Presbyopia Progression thread
Macrae 21 Sep 2007, 20:50 I posted here around the beginning of the year when I got glasses for the first time. My arms became too short after I turned 40. I have been wearing glasses since then for reading and the computer, but I could not see clearly past about 5 or 6 feet with them on so I haven’t been wearing them except for close tasks. For about a week I was self conscious of wearing reading glasses, but I got over it when people stopped commenting on my glasses. Over the summer I was having problems with my eyes that I thought were related to spending too much time on the computer and/or allergies. I was having stinging eyes, a lot of tears and blinking, and headaches. I went to the doctor and got some allergy drugs but they didn’t help very much and my doctor suggested a return to the optometrist and I finally did that on Tuesday. The verdict there was that my glasses prescription really should work for distance too, and the reason I can’t see and am having all these problems is because I am over focusing all the time, and my eye issues and headaches are probably the result of a constant struggle to adjust the focus. So anyway, the suggested solution to this was that for 10 days I should put my glasses on first thing in the morning and wear them all day, for everything except driving, and I should keep them on even if it seems like I can’t see as well far away. This should make my eyes relax. The optometrist predicted that this would make my headache go away, and so far that’s true. He also predicts that by the end of this time I will be able to see clearly with my glasses - probably enough to drive, but if not then either I should get different glasses to drive or get bifocals. I’ve been wearing glasses full time since Wednesday, and things are getting a lot clearer with them on - and a lot worse with them off. When I woke up this morning the numbers on my clock were all fuzzy until I put my glasses on. In the shower I couldn’t read the shampoo bottle label AT ALL, which I could have done before by focusing hard for a short bit of time Some of my initial self-consciousness has come back, related to being a full time glasses wearer, but then I think to myself that nobody is probably even noticing that change except for me, and if they are they’re just mentally noting “guy with glasses” and not reading my mind and seeing “awkward bespectacled geek”. So it seems to be a trade off: no more splitting headache or stinging, blinky eyes - but giving up my remaining ability to focus on anything small and close. And no more pretending I’m not a geek
Julian 22 Sep 2007, 22:26 Macrae: congratulations on getting rid of the headaches and eyestrain. You’re discovering for yourself that your optometrist is right: your problem of too-short-arms was caused by latent hyperopia, not presbyopia. You ought to have been told this when you first got your glasses (or maybe you were but didn’t take it in?) As you are discovering, you can’t have it both ways - you get the benefit of having your vision corrected, and you lose the clear bareyed vision (and the non-geek image!) To me it’s a non-issue; but then I like glasses and I like wearing them. Geeks rule OK! By the way I looked back through the archive for your previous post and can’t find it. Did you post under another name, or on a different thread?
EyeSpy 22 Sep 2007, 22:50 Julian Try the new glasses thread
Macrae You’ll probably find that your self consciousness disappears as the need to wear your glasses to see clearly grows. I was always self conscious about my glasses until it got to the stage where it was more embarrassing not to wear them.
Macrae 23 Sep 2007, 10:04 Thanks Julian and Eyespy. Yes, I may have posted in a different thread. It was around late January or early February I would guess, as it was a New Years resolution to get to the eye doctor. At that time I was told something along the lines of “You’ll find that glasses will help with the problems you’re having with reading and the computer. You may find that they will be helpful for other things as well, and it will not do any harm if you want to wear them to walk around.” But when I got them I did not think that I could wear them for “walking around”, because the point where things became blurry was only about 6 feet away. It wasn’t explained to me until last week that this blurriness might possibly go away if I wore them more - or that there would be any benefit in that. I do know that the “blurry point” has moved further outward over just a few days. On Wednesday it drove me crazy to look at bookcases on the other side of my office and not be able to read the titles on the books’ spines, or to look out the window and see blurry trees. By Friday I could read the book titles and thought that I was getting used to the blurry trees. This morning I was sitting reading the paper in a coffee shop that is a usual weekend destination for me and I was looking off through the window and across the street and I realized that I could read the sign in the window across the street (local attorney’s office, with his name in big letters and his areas of practice listed below in smaller letters). I am positive that I could not do that last week with my glasses on. But the weird thing is that I’m not sure I could ever really read the smaller part of the sign with them off, either, because I don’t remember ever reading that information before. My eye doc told me to try wearing my glasses all the time for 10 days and to avoid the temptation to keep doing the glasses on/glasses off test and just leave them on all the time, but I couldn’t resist doing that test on this sign. So when I took my glasses off I could see the sign, including the smaller lettering, but I had to think about seeing it “on purpose”, which is probably why I never noticed it before. It stayed in focus for a few seconds but then it kind of blurred out - what happens is that the letters seem to develop duplicates of themselves that slide over a bit, and then they get kind of smeared and I have to purposely re-focus again to get it back. So I do understand now what’s been going on: my eyes are so tired because they’re always trying to fix that and keep that initial clear focus and it’s just very difficult to maintain for more than a few seconds. As for the self-consciousness thing: I know it’s ridiculous, especially since pretty much anybody I know has seen me wear glasses for reading by now. I guess it’s just that walking around with glasses on feels a little weird and awkward to me so I feel like others are seeing me that way, when they of course aren’t. Anyway if I really can see better across the street with glasses than without then I probably don’t want to be walking around without them.
EyeSpy 23 Sep 2007, 12:46 Macrae It’s kind of weird for a myope to read your posts because with your glasses on you’re experiencing exactly what an uncorrected myope does. And, for those here who don’t like to admit they need glasses (You know who you are) your comments about not being able to see across the street are particularly pertinent. Best of luck, you really will get used to those frames on your nose. And when you finally come to know how critical they are you won’t give a damn what other people think or say.
Macrae 23 Sep 2007, 13:20 Yes, with my glasses on I am (or was) experiencing what someone nearsighted would want to get glasses to fix! So you can understand that it is has been a little bit difficult over the last few days to make myself keep my glasses on all the time, since there’s the blur whenever I look off into the distance and taking them off would have made things like trees clearer. (Then again, I don’t make a habit of studying trees in minute detail and am not sure why it is such a big deal if they are out of focus for me for a few days or weeks.) But the blur is getting less blurry, and I’m not feeling as much like everything looks strange, so I’m not having as many thoughts about taking them off to be able to see! I guess the theory is that if I force myself to wear the glasses it will force my eyes to relax and that if I keep this up for a week or two it should be enough to knock out the tendency to constantly pull so hard to over focus. It is weird to be doing something deliberately that will result in worse unaided vision. But just not having a headache for few days has probably been worth it. Earlier I said that everybody has seen me with reading glasses. That’s not 100% true. My family hasn’t ever seen me with glasses. I’m having dinner with my brother and his family tonight and I’ve never mentioned anything to him about getting glasses in the first place, so I have a little apprehension about showing up bespectacled - but it just has to be gotten over. I’m enjoying all the threads here - it’s good to hear others’ experiences.
Macrae 23 Sep 2007, 21:06 My Evening: Part 1 Now I have an incident to relate: I went to my brother’s house for dinner and I was determined to wear the damn glasses, even though as I was driving there I had a feeling a lot like the scared/sick/embarrassed feeling I’d get as a child when anticipating something like having to speak in front of an audience. My brother lives about an hour away and we see each other on average once a month or so. He hadn’t seen my glasses yet, nor had they come up in conversation. This brother, Greg, got glasses himself when he was a teenager. When he was about 17 it was obvious to everyone but him (or maybe him too) that he was getting pretty nearsighted, but when anyone would catch him squinting to read signs or recognize someone across a parking lot he would say the sun was in his eyes, that’s all, and he definitely didn’t need glasses. Mom finally issued an ultimatum after he hit a parked car in the lot at the beach (again the sun was in his eyes): either get glasses or he couldn’t take his car to college in the fall. She said she couldn’t afford any more increases in her car insurance, but I’m sure she was mostly afraid Greg’s blurry driving would get him or somebody else killed. With great dramatic protests he caved and went to the optometrist. I am 5 years older and was not living at home anymore so I did not see him with glasses until the winter holidays, and then they would disappear into their case the split second that he stopped the car or the instant the lights came on in a movie theater. When he came home again the next summer he had contacts, which he’s worn full time ever since. I’ve never even seen a picture of him in glasses. I’m sure this all influenced my own feelings about wearing glasses.
Macrae 23 Sep 2007, 21:06 My Evening: Part 2 So back to the present: I wasn’t wearing my glasses to drive to Greg’s house, but I put them on when I got to their driveway, and felt that sharp twinge of self-consciousness. I saw Greg in the yard with the kids and got the idea that maybe he wouldn’t notice my new look right away if I got past him quickly, so I called out “hi Greg I’ll just take this in to Susan [Greg’s wife]”, waving the bottle of wine to distract him as I rushed across his porch to the front door. But I wasn’t quick enough. He said “whoa… come back here a second.” So I knew he’d noticed, and I stopped and turned around and he came up on the porch and smiled at me, and I looked at him sheepishly. His gleeful response to my new look: “I knew this day would come!” He proceeded to tell me that I looked very scholarly and that it’s about time I got glasses since I was always “the bookish one” who should have had them all along. He was trying to be complimentary - I think - in telling me that I have a “glasses type of face”. This makes me suppose that all these years people (or maybe just Greg) have looked at me and imagined a “Glasses Coming Soon!” sign across my nose… All during this conversation I was fighting the strong impulse to take off the glasses and hide them away forever. So I explained about getting reading glasses last winter, and the recent headaches, etc., and the current full time experiment. And I confessed to feeling very self-conscious and still being in the “getting used to it” phase. And I said “maybe I’ll end up wearing contacts all the time, like you.” …at which point Greg’s daughter Emily, age 6, came up on the porch, and interjected: “Daddy wears glasses most times.” Me: “Really?” Greg: (smiling a little and looking at his shuffling feet) “Well, no, um, for work sometimes. It’s more comfortable at the computer.” Emily: “You were wearing them today Daddy” (note that it’s Sunday - not a work day for Greg.)
Macrae 23 Sep 2007, 21:07 My Evening: Part 3 At this point I’m realizing that this probably means that Greg wears his glasses a lot, on a regular basis, and that he might have put contacts in specifically because I was coming to visit. And I can tell that Greg knows that I’m realizing this, and that now he’s feeling the same way I was feeling a minute before. He’s smiling nervously and not making eye contact. “She’s just so observant” he says, shrugging at Emily. So naturally the only thing for me to do is insist upon seeing him in these glasses right away. He protests a little, but there’s no good reason he can come up with on the spot to not just go get them, especially since I’m standing there all obviously embarrassed about being four-eyed myself and yet bravely persevering at bespectacled geekdom. So he goes into the house for a couple minutes. During that time I think to myself that this whole awkward schoolboy-ish interaction could probably go a long way toward instilling similar glasses-phobia in young Emily (who is surely destined for four-eyedness herself since both Susan and Greg wear glasses…) and that we really should just stop being so childish/vain/self-conscious right now before we pass this on to the next generation. And where does the whole glasses stigma come from in the first place? My deep thoughts were interrupted by Greg returning, with a ceremonious “Ta Da!”, in a pair of oval silver wire rims that I think look more “scholarly” than my own glasses and have lenses much thicker than he had that winter 17 years ago. I told him they suited him. I didn’t ask how long he’d been wearing them “most times”, or whether (and why) he purposely wore contacts every time he saw me, though I do wonder how far back that’s been going on… I didn’t want to make him feel any sillier than I think he already felt. I think both of us feel relieved to have our very ridiculous “big secret” finally out in the open. Everybody’s glasses stayed on through dinner. I would guess that the next time we see each other we’ll both be wearing glasses.
Julian 24 Sep 2007, 04:17 Macrae: When Eyespy pointed me to the ‘New glasses’ thread I was slightly abashed to discover that we’d had a conversation on the same lines in February. I was also interested to note that you’d been advised to wear your glasses for more than just reading and close work, but obviously hadn’t taken that on board at the time Finally, I loved you story about your evening at your brother’s - two grown men behaving like schoolboys who don’t want to be seen wearing glasses, Greg changing into contacts before you arrived, and you shamefacedly putting them on anyway. Well done you!
Sera 24 Sep 2007, 07:48 Macrae, That’s also what led me to the optometrist, that “tired eyes” feeling that was present (along with some mind-numbing headaches), no matter the hours of sleep that were gotten. I’m glad to hear that you’re rid of those; no small thing that. It does seem strange that what once was easy without our glasses is now not attainable. I tried to read in bed without my specs last night, and it was an effort in futility, so I just plopped my glasses on and settled in. It’s not that long ago that I COULD see them without a struggle, but the operative word here is that. Who wants to struggle to be able to see? So wear your specs with your head held high, and worry not about what others are thinking!
Macrae 25 Sep 2007, 19:04 Tuesday, Part 1 For anybody who read my posts about my Sunday visit, there was some peculiar followup this evening: My brother Greg called earlier, ostensibly about advice on a home repair issue. But he didn’t really seem very attentive to my detailed fix-it instructions, and started shifting the conversation around from one odd topic to another, until finally he asked whether I’d talked to Mom lately. I said no, not in a few days. He said “so you didn’t mention seeing me on Sunday?” Then in a telepathic flash I understood that what he wanted to know was whether I’d spilled his big weird secret. So, in a tone intended to convey my full understanding AND my smile over the phone lines, I said “no, I thought I’d tell her all about THAT when I call her tomorrow!” (but I think I really sounded more like my 10-year-old self chanting “I’m telling! I’m telling!” upon catching a younger sibling guilty of some infraction.) He laughed, and there was a long pause. Feeling that it was fair to continue in this vein since he’d brought up the topic - even though he hadn’t quite - I said “Greg there’s something I just have to ask…” He said “I knew you would.” I said “How long has that been going on?” Greg: “A long time. Since my second year of grad school.” Me: “That was ten years ago!” Greg: “Twelve.” Me: “Greg, I’ve seen you at least a hundred times since then.” Greg: “I know.” Me: “So why….” Greg: “I don’t know.” Me: “What if you’d run into me somewhere unexpectedly?” Greg, laughing: “That’s happened three times. But I always saw you before you saw me. " . “So I had a few seconds to put things away…. But last time I thought you might know.” Me: “How?” Greg: “Marks?” Me: “No, I didn’t know. Guess I’m not that observant. When was this?” Greg: “July. Remember at the car show at the fairgrounds?” Me: “Yeah… but we must have spent two hours together that day!” Greg: “Yep. Couldn’t see shit.” I’m trying not to laugh too much at this point, at the craziness of twelve years of fear and subterfuge over something most people would never think to hide, and also at the apparent game of keeping up the conversation without using a certain word…
Macrae 25 Sep 2007, 19:09 Tuesday, Part 2 Me: “Ok, so Mom doesn’t know… Who else?” Greg: “Alan [our stepfather], Jason [our middle brother], Rebecca and Kate [our step sisters].” Me: “Why?” Greg: “I told you, I don’t know. It was just hard with people who knew me back before. Then it went on a long time.” Me: “But Susan, your kids, everybody else….” Greg: “Yes of course. They all see me everyday. Friends, people at work, everybody else… Put it this way: if you asked any of them to describe me they’d mention that.” Me: “Susan must know that you’re hiding “that” from your family?” Greg: “Yeah she’s known that as long as she’s known any of you. And every single time she tells me I’m conceited and crazy.” Me: “That IS crazy, Greg. What was the big deal - " Greg: (cutting me off, and starting to sound a little irritated at my relentless and admittedly judgmental questions) “Well, you said yours were a New Years’ resolution? Me: “Yes."= Greg: “It’s October. Have any of those people seen them yet?” Me (feeling my face go red): “Point taken.” Another long pause. Greg: “Want to know what’s crazier?” Me: “Naturally” Greg: “I can’t even talk to any of you on the phone with them. I have to take them off.” Me: “That’s astonishingly weird, Greg… Wait, what about now? Now that I know?” Greg: “It’s ok now.” Me: “They’re on?” Greg: “Yes. Yours?” Me: “On.” Greg: “Susan is really happy you caught me.” Me: “Are you happy?” Greg: “Relieved. It was inevitable.” Me: “Greg, how about if I just tell Mom about us both? You know she’ll tell everyone, and then it will be all done with for both of us.” Greg: “No!” Me: “Relax, I won’t. I’ll be quiet like Susan if you want, and just give you hell afterward. But sooner or later your kids are probably going to blow your cover again.” Greg: “Yeah, I know. Damn kids!” Me: “Ok, look, what if you don’t tell anybody - just show up and let them see?” Greg: “Like you did on Sunday.” Me: “Yeah, that was awful for a couple minutes… " Greg: “I could tell.” Me: “I’m going to get that over with again, with the rest of them, when I see them all at Thanksgiving. Why don’t we just… show up together?” Greg: (with less humor and more finality) “I’ll think about it.” And then, just like that, he started talking about his home renovation projects again - subject closed - for now.
Julian 26 Sep 2007, 09:05 Macrae: can this possibly get any better?
Macrae 26 Sep 2007, 18:47 Better? It might depend on your perspective, Greg’s bravery, my ability to resist the temptation to just out him by email to Mom… Can Greg finally integrate his social masks, with the support of a sympathetic (sometimes shaming) sibling in a similar predicament, in time for Thanksgiving? Or might exposure to Greg’s acute focus on self-as-seen-by-others only increase that tendency clearly apparent in me? (A few days ago I would not really have thought the latter, but last night I dreamed of getting contacts!) How others see me is one thing, but seeing is another, and on that front things are no more clear-cut: today marks Day 8 of Glasses All Day Everyday. Trees got their leaves back by the weekend, but the leaves have soft edges as if every one is dipped in wax, and they’re just staying that way now. I scan the book titles on the shelves across a room easily, but if anything the words on this screen are less distinct than ever and my left eye in particular has given up any attempt to sharpen them for me. So I can’t see what I’m writing clearly but I clearly see where this is going…
Julian 26 Sep 2007, 23:04 OK, so I meant better as a story, and I think you posted in that spirit. Of course that isn’t the whole picture - but as teachers used to say to school leavers, I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest - both of you! And of course there’s Jason as well… By the way, if things are going the way you hint at, contacts won’t solve everything!
Macrae 27 Sep 2007, 17:17 Oh I see - so you’re hoping I’ll next discover that Jason is also teetering on the cusp of Presbyopia? Or leading the secret double life of a nearsighted nerd, tormented by equal parts vanity and insanity? Or that he dreams of the day his wife can’t make out a menu, while moonlighting at Lenscrafters in the mall? All possible, but none likely. I think Jason is 20/20, though admittedly I don’t see him that much - and it seems seeing only goes so far. But Jason is the no-nonsense, decisive, slightly overkill type - so if he ever did have any vision issue I’d expect to hear “the tv was a little blurry last week, so I got laser surgery yesterday” - end of story. In fact that’s the suggestion I’m expecting from him when he sees me. Jason has a knack for sounding practical, helpful, and critical all at once - and he’s always dead sure that his solution is the only sensible one. From my mom I expect the half-sad smile that means “in the blink of an eye my little boy is middle-aged.” And from Alan probably “Welcome to the club!” and an offer of one of a hundred tiny screwdriver kits he’s stashed all over the house, ever-ready for the rescue of his own disaster-plagued glasses. But, if I can prod Greg into joining this big reveal then I get just half of this embarrassment - and maybe less than half, if attention is doled out proportionate to lens thickness. Now Julian, about contacts: are there not such thing as bifocal contacts? I’ve never given contacts much thought before, but I’d like to think I have options…
Julian 28 Sep 2007, 01:22 Yes Macrae, I believe there are bifocal contacts, but I don’t know how well they work. There’s also monovision: wearing one contact for near vision and one for far off; strange as it may seem that is said to work better. But other people know more about that; I’m not into contacts, and I hope you don’t get seduced into going that way like Greg. You talk abut Jason being no-nonsense and decisive. I think that is how you are acting so far: “I was getting eyestrain so I’m wearing glasses.” Don’t let the side down; carry on ‘bravely persevering at bespectacled geekdom’ - your phrase! - and I don’t see how Greg can do anything but follow your example. he admits it’s crazy anyway.
Aubrac 28 Sep 2007, 02:18 Macrae Yes there are bifocal contacts and I’ve worn them for about ten years. They actually work very well with no apparent line or visual difference between the distance and add section. Also you do not need to tilt your head or read at a different angle. They are limited to a maximum add of +2.50 possibly for some technical reason although someone may know of a manufacturer who does stronger ones.
Macrae 02 Oct 2007, 20:46 Two weeks ago my optometrist told me to try wearing my formerly-worn-for-reading-only glasses full time for 10 days, to relax my eyes and ease a bunch of eyestrain symptoms. I was supposed to serve out that sentence and then either discover that all was now clear through my glasses at any distance, or return to the optometrist for prescription tweaking. So I wore them full time for 10 days. And the symptoms subsided. And things got clearer over time, though not quite perfectly. So what did I do next? I bet you’re thinking “went back to the eye doctor. Duh.” But no I did not. Instead I went camping for four days - and I left my glasses home. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. I reasoned that camping, hiking, and boating are outwardly-focused enough that glasses weren’t critical for seeing what I needed to see. And except for some minor cooking-related complications that was technically true. But though most anything was see-able, nothing quite looked right. And it didn’t take long at all before I had a mind-splitting, teeth-clenching headache that I tried to kill with caffeine and pain pills. Then I tried to kill it with sleep. But every day I woke up with some of the headache left from the night before, and every day I was more tired than the night before…
Macrae 03 Oct 2007, 16:47 When I came back from my camping trip the first thing I did was put on my glasses. My eyes thanked me. My headache mostly subsided. I looked at the tired four-eyed nerd in the mirror and sighed. I asked him if we should look into getting contacts. He made the point that taking out contacts might not turn out to be all that convenient in a tent in the dark in the woods. And he thought that though we looked very tired we aren’t really any more (or less) hideous with glasses than without, and not only that but glasses are somewhat of a stereotypical accessory in our field anyway, and if anything it’s probably better for our professional image that we remain bespectacled. Also he suggested that maybe I’ve been conditioned (no little bit by my exposure to Greg) to feel that I need to bemoan the needing of glasses, when really it is not so terrible and I might even like them - just a little. So I told my reflection that I’d take his opinions under advisement (and Julian’s too), and I resigned myself to no more bare-eyed camping trips. I should probably schedule a return to the optometrist soon.
mattp 05 Oct 2007, 06:20 Macrae–Your writing style and your story are both fascinating to read. Please continue to keep us informed on your glasses-wearing progress! Matt
Macrae 07 Oct 2007, 10:40 mattp: Thank you - I’m glad that you’re enjoying my “glasses wearing progress”. Ever since I was a child I’ve found that writing has helped me work out various things about which I have conflicting feelings, and here I seem to have the benefit of an understanding audience : ) I think two things need to happen to make me feel finished with the “progress” part of this and at peace with the fully bespectacled version of myself: 1) I need to go back and make sure I have the correct/optimal prescription, and 2) I need to get over my apprehension about my family’s reaction by just letting them see me wear glasses. The latter probably can’t happen until we are all together at Thanksgiving, which means I have 6+ weeks still to worry about that - but I know that eventually it will all be over in just a few minutes of uncomfortable attention. On the issue of the prescription: it doesn’t quite seem right. My perception is that beyond 10 or 12 feet my glasses are too strong, but at the same time my naked vision is not what it used to be. Up close one eye is happier than the other. I’d like to get that figured out as quickly as possible, so I scheduled an appointment for Wednesday. But now it looks like I am going to be out of town most of that day on work-related matters and it will have to get pushed back. So: I’m trying to make progress at making progress, but it’s going a little slowly… Stay tuned.
Macrae 07 Oct 2007, 16:45 Cactus Jack, Julian, mattp etc.: do you have stories on here somewhere about when you first got glasses, and when you started wearing them all the time, if it wasn’t right away? I am interested in others’ experiences.
Julian 07 Oct 2007, 17:50 The ‘When I was at school’ thread has several stories of that kind. Scroll to the bottom and click on ‘View all posts’.
Macrae 08 Oct 2007, 12:37 Thanks Julian. It took awhile to read all those, but wow - so much detail recalled, such great significance placed on those occurrences, and what a staggering amount of worry and trauma experienced by many of the little glasses-wearers of the world. I will contribute the few school-age glasses stories I can remember.
Macrae 10 Oct 2007, 17:31 Progress to report: I thought I’d have to cancel today’s eye appointment because of a work-related trip today, but the optometrists’ office offered to move me to an early evening appointment and I managed to make it back in time. I’m too tired tonight to write a detailed account. I promise to do so soon. But in the meantime: anybody want to play “guess the prescription”?
Macrae 12 Oct 2007, 17:02 In the interest of progress I went back to the optometrist a few days ago. Since I had to move my original appointment to later in the day I ended up not seeing the eye doc I saw the last two times (the one who prescribed my first-ever glasses last winter, and then last month told me to try wearing them all the time, as a solution to continuing headaches and eyestrain.) I saw the other doc in that office, but he seemed to have browsed through my file and understood what was going on. I explained that I did faithfully wear the glasses all the time for a couple of weeks, and that it substantially helped my headaches. But my distance vision seems a little too annoyingly blurry to feel comfortable wearing glasses all the time - and definitely not good for driving. I didn’t mention that things up close are not really too great either - because I thought that if I did I might steer things toward ending up with bifocals, and that if I didn’t tell him that part then maybe he wouldn’t start to think in that direction unnecessarily… So we went through all of the “which is better, 1 or 2” types of tests with the chart projected on the wall, and at the end of that he said that my distance vision is “not bad, but less than optimal” because of an amount of astigmatism, and he said that I was right that my glasses are not the right prescription for distance, but that he recommended glasses for driving - especially at night or in the rain. Then we did the part with the card with the rows of progressively more tiny text, clipped just in front of the lens-picking gadget. He flipped things around until I could read the tiniest row. Then while he was moving the gadget out of the way he sort of sighed and said “ok, are you ready for the news?” I said I guessed so (while thinking “no!”). He said “You need progressive lenses.” And then he told me that I’m at an age where prescriptions start to change a lot, and that it’s normal, and so on and so forth. And even though I obviously suspected that this is where things would wind up, I still felt a little funny (dread mixed with little bits of embarrassment, amusement and surprise?) He said something like “are you ok with this?”, and I thought to myself “well do I have any choice?” but said “yes, I suppose so.” He explained that I will be able to see at every distance, and that I won’t need to wear them all the time but that I might want to because my headaches may have as much to do with astigmatism as with my small amount of farsightedness, and that for a few weeks I should try to wear them all the time to adjust, and then it would be up to me when to use them. He said another option would be lined trifocals (!), because that would also work for distance, computer, and reading, but I think he could tell from my expression that I didn’t like the sound of that. I have the prescription but I’ve been much too busy with work and/or exhausted the last few days to do anything about it. I guess I will have to go look at some glasses this weekend. Anybody have any advice or dire warnings about progressives?
Cactus Jack12 Oct 2007, 18:22 Macrae, The choice of progressives, bifocals, or trifocals depends on the kind of work you do, your life style and your Rx. About the dumbest thing you can do is make an emotional decision instead of a practical one. Remember, glasses are a tool to help you function efficiently and comfortably, nothing more. I’m sure there are as many suggestions as there are members, but it would be helpful is you could answer the above items. C. BTW, I have worn trifocals for about 35 years, since my mid-30s, and have tried almost every other lens style. I read a lot, work with computers, large drawings and settled on trifocals for the sharpest vision and maximum convenience. I also have a pair of single vision reading glasses that I use when I plan to read for several hours.
Cactus Jack 12 Oct 2007, 18:26 Macrae, Also, if I was younger and active on the social scene, I might have a pair of progressives to wear for special occasions where all I needed to do was drive, talk to people, and read menus. C.
Macrae 12 Oct 2007, 19:42 Thanks for the reply. In answer to your questions: the prescription says: +1.25 -0.75 x 110, +1.25 -.75 x 050 Add* +1.00 (+1.25 /c PAL*) As for the kind of work I do: it sounds like it has some similarities to what you do (I spend a lot of time on computers, and large drawings figure significantly), though I just spent a major part of the last several days driving around and meeting with people. I spend a lot of time reading, and also a lot of time outdoors. I’m trying to be practical about things and while I clearly have had various emotional reactions to the whole glasses adventure I’d like to think I’ve been reasonably practical about things so far. The optometrist suggested that progressives were the best solution and I didn’t have any reason to doubt that (and of course he knows what I do for a living and such). He didn’t think that bifocals would work well because of switching between reading and computer. He mentioned trifocals as a possibility but didn’t tell me anything about why that would be a better or worse idea - but it sounds like you’re saying that I could have trouble if I want to do things besides drive, socialize and read menus. So: please give me suggestions and information! Thanks.
Cactus Jack 12 Oct 2007, 20:45 Macrae, For your Rx and your description of what you do, I think progressives might work for you - for a while and I think your optometrist is right about skipping bifocals and going to trifocals when you need more add. I’ll try to explain my thinking to help you understand my reasoning if you want. However, it is getting late here in Texas and I have had a long day so I’ll need to finish this discussion tomorrow. Sound familiar? May I ask where you live? C.
Macrae 12 Oct 2007, 21:13 Cactus Jack: thanks for the info and I look forward to the continuation As for my location: it’s somewhere in the cold and windy north, and it’s always later here than in Texas, except during the hour in April when daylight savings time has started here but not yet there. Good night.
Geoff 14 Oct 2007, 16:18 Macrae, let us know how you do wearing your new glasses fulltime. I think you will like wearing multifocal lenses.
Macrae 14 Oct 2007, 17:49 Geoff: I am sure I’ll let you know how I do. Writing and conversing on this board is fun and therapeutic for me. But I think it will be awhile before I know how I’ll do. I did spend some time this weekend looking at glasses. I went to three different places and tried on seemingly hundreds of frames, and I talked to each place about lenses. One of the places told me that my prescription is pretty low with a smallish add, and that in that case it’s supposed to be easier to get used to progressive lenses and also that it doesn’t matter as much which specific lens I choose. The second place told me mostly the same thing, but that because of what I do at work I should probably also have plain reading glasses because progressives might be difficult. The third place said I should get some special “wide corridor” lenses to help address that, which are of course more expensive. In any case all of those places said they’d have to order any of those lenses (except if I want just single-vision glasses for reading) and that it will take 10 days to 2 weeks. So it will be awhile before I can write anything about wearing them. And I haven’t even ordered anything yet, because I haven’t really processed all of that information/opinion and because I also didn’t find anything in all of those hundreds of frames that I really liked. I don’t love the frames I’m currently wearing either. They’re ok, but when I picked them I didn’t know that I would be wearing them all or a lot of the time and they’re not necessarily the look that I want for that. Maybe if I do end up needing two separate pair of glasses I would keep these as the “reading” pair and pick some new ones as the “rest of the time” pair… If anybody else wants to give me advice I’d appreciate it.
Visitor 14 Oct 2007, 21:32 Macrae Having trouble locating your early post with prescription. Can you fill us in?
mattp 15 Oct 2007, 06:42 Macrae– The trifocals/progressives decision is a big one, and one that has been discussed many times on various threads here on eyescene. My suggestion is to go to a place where you can exchange the lenses if whichever you choose doesn’t work out. I tried progressives years ago, but found i could not get enough width in my field of vision for all the computer/desk work I do at an intermediate distance. I switched to FT35 trifocals, and have had fantastic vision even as my RX has changed through the years. Yes, there is the line issue, and i was uncomfortable with it at first as i was only in my early forties. But i got over that. Good luck!
Macrae 16 Oct 2007, 15:31 I ordered some glasses today - with progressive lenses. Mattp, I took your advice and made sure that I would be allowed to exchange the lenses if things don’t work out. I am hoping that this works, but the optician at the glasses shop was a little skeptical too when I told him my occupation, and also when I chose some frames that are a little narrow vertically. But he did a bunch of measuring and then said it seemed like it should work because of the way the frames sit on my face. I figure this is worth a shot. If I can’t see then I will consider some other solution. But they said +/- 10 days until they’re ready, so I’m waiting and worrying. “Visitor”: my current prescription is down the page, in my October 12 post. I think the one that I got last winter is in another thread. It wasn’t much different than this one, except that it was mostly for reading and turned out to be too blurry for my distance vision, and at the same time things were a little blurry up close too. I’m looking forward to everything being headache-free AND sharp. Or am I dreaming?
Macrae 18 Oct 2007, 15:12 Yikes! the dreaded glasses are ready already. I thought I had a lot more time to worry about them But when I got home this evening there was a message that they’re in. I guess tomorrow I will go see how I see with them. Is there any big trick to it? If so will they teach me whatever I need to know?
Tony 18 Oct 2007, 15:51 Mac, It sounds silly, but the trick is not to raise your eyes up and down, but to point to nose where you want to see, and you will automatically see through the proper portion of the lens. It takes some getting used to. I was advised to wear them solidly for two weeks. That did work.
Guest 18 Oct 2007, 22:26 Macrae Have you continued to wear your specs fulltime? If yes then you should have too much more to get used to with the new prescription.
Macrae 20 Oct 2007, 18:46 Tony: thanks for the advice. “Guest”: I wore them for about 10 days all the time, and then I didn’t wear them at all for 4 or 5 days while I was camping (and got a splitting headache for it) and after that I continued to wear them most of the time for the last couple weeks. They did a great job of preventing headaches, but they were still too blurry for very far away. My original eye doctor had said that they were the right prescription and that my eyes should be able to relax so that the prescription would work for all distances, but that really only happened up to a point. I couldn’t wear them for driving and I had to take them off for things in the far distance because they were just too blurry. The second eye doctor got pretty much the same prescription from the machine that they use initially, but he had more of the attitude that if I couldn’t see then the glasses weren’t right, and he changed the prescription so it wasn’t as strong in the distance, and he tweaked the astigmatism axis parts just a little. And here is what’s happened since then…
Macrae 20 Oct 2007, 18:55 New Glasses 1: I picked up “the dreaded glasses” yesterday afternoon, and: holy freakin’ crap! The 2nd eye doctor hit on the magic prescription. I can see a whole level of detail that I didn’t know was there. Like did you know that the glass in traffic lights has tiny square waffle patterns in it? You probably did, but I didn’t. When I put them on in the glasses store it was immediately apparent that everything was brighter and shinier and sharper than it had been lately (or ever, it seems). The store people said the frames were crooked and needed some adjustment and I actually felt like I didn’t want to hand them back, in case they might do something that would mess up the perfect focus. But I let them straighten them out and they spent some time with me making sure I could see in the distance and read small text. In addition to Tony’s “point your nose where you want to look” advice they told me: don’t wear them to drive home, get used to them at home for awhile before you drive; be very careful on curbs and stairs, hold onto handrails, your feet may not be where you think they are; wear them all the time for a week to 10 days. (No problem, I don’t want to take them off.)
Macrae 20 Oct 2007, 18:59 New Glasses 2: I haven’t had any trouble with stairs and curbs. Everything in the distance is shockingly sharp. I went to my usual coffee shop this morning and could read all the signs across the street, the blackboards with the menus on them, the license plates of the cars going by, and the magazine in front of me. Outdoors it was an exceptionally beautiful fall day to begin with, but everything was so clear and bright and colorful it almost felt TOO clear. I was out driving in the dark this evening and all the road signs and mailbox numbers were perfect, without their usual fuzzy or double/blurry edges. I know, you’re probably thinking I should have realized a long time ago that they weren’t supposed to have fuzzy double edges! Around dusk a couple deer ran across the road in front of my car, and just after that I saw a camouflaged bow hunter walking along the side of the road in the near-dark. I’ve never seen either of those things on that road before, and I have to think that’s just coincidence that I spotted them tonight, but the possibility does exist that there’ve been deer (and God knows what else) all over the place that I just couldn’t see in the dark before : ) Closer things are a little tricky. It’s a little difficult so far to find the right spot to look through sometimes. I had the biggest problem with that when I went to the store this afternoon, because it was tough to find the right spot to use to read things at the distance of store shelves, and it was especially weird to try to scan a shelf horizontally - things do go in and out of focus and warp and change shape a little. Reading a book or magazine seems pretty simple. The computer looks ok, though some icons at the periphery of the screen are a little warped/not square. But there are things that aren’t that easy: I have a habit of lying on my back on the couch with the laptop computer propped on a couple couch pillows on top of me. That does not work now, because in that position the correct part of the lenses is not in the trajectory between my eyes and the screen. Lying on my side on the couch to watch tv also doesn’t work. But I have to think maybe this is a good thing, as I seem to be spending way too much time lying on the couch… I also had a weird experience where I had filled a kettle at the kitchen sink and reached to shut off the water while walking away toward the stove, and my fingers just totally missed the end of the faucet lever. It’s pretty weird to find that objects aren’t where you just saw them. I don’t know yet how well these glasses will do at work where I have to read and work on things bigger than a book or a magazine, and switch a lot between the computer and the things on my desk. I’m optimistic because there don’t seem to be too many problems yet, but I guess I’ll find out on Monday. The optometrist said that after the getting-used-to-it period I should wear them for reading or any other type of close work, computer, tv, movies, and driving, but otherwise it’s up to me to decide how much to wear them or not. I have some still-lingering vanity/self-consciousness issues, but really I can’t think of any legitimate reason not wear to them all the time.
Cactus Jack 20 Oct 2007, 19:43 Macrae, Sounds like you are doing well and your narrative makes good reading. Now you know how the rest of us felt when we got our first glasses. There will likely be some comments, but “I didn’t know what I was missing” and “I wish I had not waited this long to get them.” are excellent responses. In fact, it may cause some others to wonder if they are missing anything visually. Don’t worry about what other people think. Remember, you wear glasses for YOUR benefit, not for theirs. Would you mind posting your revised Rx? C.
Macrae 20 Oct 2007, 20:41 Cactus Jack: the original prescription from January was: +1.75 -.75 x 105, +1.75 -.75 x 042 I got those because I was having problems reading. Actually my coworkers (who almost all wear glasses) were picking on me that my arms were getting too short, and after awhile that shamed me into going to Eye Doctor #1. I got those glasses and just wore them for reading/computer. But in the summer I was getting headaches and watery eyes all the time and, after determining that the cause was not allergies, I went back to Doc #1 a month or two ago and was told to try wearing those same glasses all the time for a couple weeks. He felt that my eyes would adapt to the prescription. As I wrote below, I tried that as directed and it did help the headaches and watery eyes, but those glasses were too blurry for the distance, and not that clear for close up either. When I went back last week I saw a different optometrist in the same office (Doc #2) who came up with: +1.25 -0.75 x 110, +1.25 -.75 x 050 Add +1.25 - which seems much better so far, even though it doesn’t look hugely different numerically.
Mattp 21 Oct 2007, 07:40 Macrae– Congratulations on the good vision! That is the way glasses should work. Problems like the tea kettle not being where you thought it would be will improve–practice will tell you where things are. Unfortunately, as you get used to the progressives, it becomes more difficult to not wear them because the brain gets used to accommodating for things in their new positions. I wear contacts instead of trifocals for sports and haircuts and dentist appointments and such, and the transition to them is tough. Problems like trying to see the computer while lying down will not improve. With the trifocals, I’ve had to give up watching TV lying on the couch (a good thing anyway) because I can’t get my eyes to look through the top of the lenses without odd twists of the head. Reading in bed–where the book is only 6-8 inches from my eyes–is another problem that is unsolvable. Keep us posted on how the computer vision is at work– Matt
Cactus Jack 21 Oct 2007, 09:16 Macrae, What you experienced with the +1.75 was the fact that your crystalline lenses can only relax so far and the +1.75 actually caused the same effect as being slightly myopic, but they were a good test. The +1.25 is what you needed. The slight difference in the cylinder could almost be considered fine tuning. Mattp, My solution to the reading in bed problem was to get some single vision reading glasses with the same Rx as a +3.00 add in my regular glasses. C.
Geoff 21 Oct 2007, 15:16 Macrae, congrats on your new glasses. What type of frames did you get? Let us know how your co-workers react to you in specs fulltime. BTW, how old are you?
Clare 22 Oct 2007, 12:12 Macrae - the self-conscious thing can be very destructive so try to get over it if you can. I have been vain about glasses for many years (you only have to read posts here from the past to get a clue as to how vain…) and, though I now wear contacts, the funny thing is that whenever I do wear glasses people compliment me. I don’t expect that. It’s likely that colleagues and friends will actually think that your new facial accessory looks good! I travel a lot and take quite an interest in how well-chosen glasses can improve someone’s appearance - on the train tonight I observed someone whose glasses made them look polished and professional, and another who appeared to be wearing new frames which made him look years older. So you see, glasses can actually be made to work in your favour to change/update/restyle your look. I hope you get lots of compliments from your colleagues!
Macrae 22 Oct 2007, 17:17 Geoff: I am 41. My new frames can be found here: http://www.bevelspecs.com/ (they are #3580) The reading glasses I had before were more subtle - thin matte grey rounded off rectangle wire frames. But I didn’t like those as much - they were kind of, erm… “scholarly” as my brother described it. I think they were OK for my idea of “reading”, but they aren’t how I wanted to look all the time. I like these new ones much better. Clare: I know you’re right that the self-consciousness thing needs to be gotten over. Actually for the most part I’ve been using this forum heavily to work through those issues, but I’ve been behaving outwardly much more reasonably/practically I think. I’ve been wearing reading glasses at work for most of the year, and recently I was wearing them mostly full time for several weeks, so co-workers are used to seeing me in glasses (or I’m used to being seen in glasses by co-workers?) Some of those people are the ones who pushed me into getting an eye exam last winter because they could tell I was having issues with my near vision. With those people it was more embarrassing being picked on about not being able to see than finally showing up with glasses - even though some of them teased me good-naturedly when I did get the glasses! Most of my friends have seen me in those reading glasses, and I’m not too concerned about them seeing the new ones. My own biggest self-consciousness roadblock is wearing glasses around my family - the idea of which fills me with dread. But even though it was very tough (for reasons I can’t quite figure out or express) I did wear them last time I saw one of my brothers, and it turned out fine (I wrote about that experience some weeks back) and I don’t have any worries about seeing him now with my newer glasses. I expect to summon up enough bravery to show up bespectacled for the rest of the family soon, but it remains a scary idea. As for the day at work: I chickened out and didn’t wear any glasses to an office-wide meeting first thing this morning. In that setting I thought that all it would take was one person commenting on my glasses to start a whole big glasses discussion amongst everyone, and that would have been a little more embarrassing attention than I wanted to deal with. But after the meeting I put them on when I got back to my desk and they’ve been on ever since. I felt perfectly ok with people noticing on a one-at-a-time basis. It turned out that nobody said anything at all. This could be because my new glasses look ridiculous (if so then so be it). But it could also be that they understood I was a little uncomfortable with the issue, or that new glasses just aren’t that noteworthy (I think that every single one of my co-workers has glasses or contacts, so I’m not exactly unique.)
Macrae 22 Oct 2007, 17:22 more about my day…. I didn’t have any huge vision problems with the glasses at work. After a while I didn’t notice them or think about them much. I have a dual-monitor setup for my computer and I think this may have trained me to move my head around a lot to see even before I had glasses, so I didn’t have any trouble with the computer. I was able to see the full extents of big drawings on my desk easily, and I think that these glasses are better than my old ones for very close reading material, though I do notice the peripheries of pages being a little blurred when I’m looking at the center of the page. There is some weirdness with peripheral vision - things can look warpy or skewed occasionally. I’ve had a few more experiences where things are just not where I think they are. I’ve managed to reach out and miss door handles, drawer pulls, etc. - usually when they’re off to the side of me and I’m not purposely looking at them, and it seems to happen mostly with things that are about an arm’s length away (the same distance as store shelves, which have also been weird to deal with). I realize that I’d gotten used to not being able to see well in certain situations - like if I was wearing the reading glasses and I looked out the window at work into the distance I’d have to squint a little, or if I was driving - which I didn’t have glasses for at all before - I would kind of scrunch my eyes up a certain way to read the dashboard clearly, and scrunch them up a different way to see clearly in the distance. Now I feel my eye muscles kind of get ready to squint or scrunch and then they’re surprised to find things clear. Also when I wasn’t wearing glasses I would often be kind of staring out in space when I was thinking, sort of not focusing on anything. Now it’s a little freaky to have everything almost inescapably in focus. But, if I’d have known before how clear everything could be, especially in the distance, I would have gotten these a long time ago.
Clare 23 Oct 2007, 11:22 Hi Macrae I know what you mean, the family thing is the most scary! It depends, I guess, on their attitude to glasses. In my family, few are shortsighted (just a cousin and me) so everyone seems to have held out till they can’t see to read, THEN it’s time to get glasses. It’s hard for them to comprehend not being able to see clearly at distance. I even remember my grandmother making comments that ‘it was a shame to spoil her looks with glasses’. Now glasses have come on a long way since she made those comments, but the old attitudes still prevail! Over the years my mother has come to understand that without my contacts there are things I can’t see and that really is progress, so I hope yours have a more open view about glasses. The other thing that I imagine is hard is meeting someone you haven’t seen for a long time, or since you didn’t wear glasses. You seem to be acclimatising well so I’m sure you’ll be fine.
EyeSpy 23 Oct 2007, 13:31 Macrae You’re not alone. I got my first specs at the end of my teen years and was surprised to see the sky had stars and the moon really did look like a cheese. It’s hard to believe how much we miss when we don’t know we need glasses.
Aubrac 24 Oct 2007, 00:50 Clare & Eyespy I remember very well when my sister was 14 and told after a school medical she had poor eyesight. I was 9 at the time and like Clare none of my family wore glasses (except for readers for the older members) and there was great concern at how this had happened. We were all covering one eye and trying to read the Daily Mail from the other side of the room. In my mid teens when I first got glasses, I was embarrassed to wear them in front of the family maybe because of all the earlier fuss with my sister. In my early days of glass wearing, I used to think everyone was staring at me because of my glasses but I suppose the real reason was that for the first time I could actually SEE everybody clearly. And yes, the stars instead of being fuzzy blobs were clear pinpoints of light.
Macrae 24 Oct 2007, 19:58 EyeSpy: yeah, it’s pretty startling to find out what you weren’t seeing. Since I got glasses mostly because I was having trouble reading, and it was a pretty small prescription, I just didn’t think that there was any vision issue at other distances. My vision is not nearly so bad that the stars are fuzzy blobs. But something that’s interesting to me about the stars is that with my new glasses they look like bright tiny bright dots, whereas without glasses they have radiating, slightly fuzzy “points” that spike out from them. I have a drawing on the wall in my study that I did in a college class 20 years ago that makes me wonder if some of this vision issue goes back at least that far. It’s a city night scene done from observation, and in the drawing there are those radiating “points” around all the neon signs and bright traffic lights against the dark background. But now I see that in real life most of the radiating points around street lights and such don’t seem to actually be there when I put my glasses on! Clare: I can see how your family’s reactions could have a profound effect on your feelings about wearing your glasses. I don’t actually have the excuse of a family that doesn’t understand or approve of glasses. Other than my stubborn brother, who fiercely resisted getting the glasses that everyone could see he needed at 17 (but apparently has been wearing them happily for many years now - except around the family), the rest of my family seems pretty matter-of-fact about glasses. My mom has worn drugstore reading glasses since I was a teenager, so she was about my age when she got them. My stepfather has worn glasses all the time as long as I’ve known him (also since I was a teenager) - and he’s stayed with the same round John Denver-style frames for decades, fashion be damned. One of my stepsisters has had glasses since she was in junior high and nobody ever made a big deal out of that. I remember my own father having glasses that he’d search the house for whenever there was something small to look at up close, and he was only 38 when he passed away, so maybe I inherited my farsightedness… I have nobody’s negative attitudes to blame for my issues - just my own vanity or insecurity. But regardless of the drama going on in my head I’m determined to just keep wearing them and get all the weirdness over with, because if I’m going to spend the second half of my life with glasses on I don’t want to be thinking about them this much all the time!
Willy 25 Oct 2007, 13:42 Macrae – I have been out of town so am catching up on your posts. Basically, it sounds like you and I are nearly twins, optometrically speaking. I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding neon and traffic lights, especially at night. If I do not have my glasses on at night, in general, most things have a gauzy blur to them, but looking at a light source such as a neon sign is like looking at an abstract painting – pretty unreadable until I get fairly close. During the day the difference is not as noticeable, but since its better with glasses and I would have to have them on to read anyway, I just keep them on all the time.
Geoff 26 Oct 2007, 16:59 Macrae, since you are now wearing multifocals fulltime, it will be interesting to see how quickly you lose all ability to focus close-up without the glasses.
Macrae 26 Oct 2007, 20:02 Hmm… well Geoff, “interesting” might not be the first adjective I’d use to characterize the experience - but I’ll keep you posted on the details of my physical free-fall to geezer-hood : ) My ability to focus up close was not great at the start of my glasses-wearing. That’s why I got them. Then last month when I wore those reading glasses full time for a couple weeks I seemed to lose another part of the rest of my close up focusing power pretty quickly - within a couple days I couldn’t focus on the text on the back of a shampoo bottle in the shower. I don’t know if maybe some of that focusing ability might have returned if I’d stopped wearing glasses for days or weeks. But my new glasses are stronger up close than the old ones. Does that mean I’ll lose more up-close bare-eyed focus? Let’s see how that’s going… Ok, I’m picking up a piece of junk mail that has a lot of dense fine print on the back. And I’m looking at the print with my glasses on, and now I’m going to take them off and see what happens……………………………… And now the glasses are back on. What happened: the text was smeared, small, and unreadable when I took off my glasses. I moved the paper back several inches and waited a minute or so and blinked a few times and all of that helped things pull into focus. The print was readable if I didn’t look at it for too long. After a few seconds it started to blur - and also caused a fluttery feeling in my eyes, and the feeling that they were crossing inward. Blinking some more helped things come back into focus whenever they “blurred out”. So it’s not absolutely impossible to read, but I’m not sure I could do it for very long at this point - and it hurts.
Macrae 26 Oct 2007, 20:27 I’m ok with wearing glasses to read. That took a couple weeks last winter to get used to. Wearing them all the time continues to feel very strange, and I have “cheated” a few times this week and not worn them for parts of some days. This morning I had to give a presentation in front of a big group of people and I had my glasses on at first - before it was my turn to speak - but I ended up taking them off right before I started talking, which probably called more attention to them than if I’d just worn them. And it was stupid too, because I had some notes on a laptop screen and I ended up losing my place because I couldn’t see very well. I also almost tripped down some stairs today when I wasn’t wearing glasses - even though I haven’t been having problems with stairs when I have them on. My depth perception seems all messed up this week. I’m going to try to keep them on full time for real now - no cheating - and I hope it feels “normal” by this time next week.
Geoff 27 Oct 2007, 15:12 Macrae, wearing the glasses fulltime will eventually come naturally as your presbyopia worsens. You will have no trouble adjusting to FT wear.
Macrae 27 Oct 2007, 19:30 Geoff, is it ok to ask: how old are you and what is your vision situation? I’ll take your word for it that I’ll have no problems adjusting eventually, as my near vision worsens… The reason I’ve been trying to wear glasses all the time is because of the instructions I got to wear them full time for a while (the optometrist who prescribed them told me 2 weeks, the optician who sold them to me told me at least 1 week)). I was told that after that adjustment period I don’t necessarily have to wear them all the time - it’s up to me. But the long list of things that I was told to wear them for, combined with how much better I can see - especially outdoors and driving - and how much better my head and eyes feel, all make it seem like it would be pretty inconvenient to always be putting them on and taking them off. If I can get mentally comfortable with the idea of myself as a permanent full time glasses wearer then I think everything will be a lot easier that way.
Geoff 28 Oct 2007, 11:10 Macrae, I am 50. Have been wearing glasses since I was 40. Have needed an increase in my add every two or so years. Now my add is +2.50 and distance is +1.25. Went fulltime around age 45 when distant vision started to get fuzzy.
Macrae 28 Oct 2007, 15:18 Better, cheaper, less fuzzy, more convenient… those are lots of good reasons. It’s been a fully-4-eyed weekend for me. All this prolonged focus on getting glasses - from getting the right prescription to getting the glasses to getting used to them - has made me very aware of everybody else’s glasses too lately. I was back in my weekend coffee shop this morning, noting the comings and goings of the bespectacled masses, and I was thinking that they all seem perfectly happy and comfortable, and it’s just me that has some issues. But no sooner had I thought this than I overheard two guys talking - the younger was about 25 and wearing black and gold wire frames that reminded me of glasses that boys I knew wore in high school in the “preppy” part of the ’80s, the older man was about 55 with some big (dorky) silver aviator glasses - it sounded like the older guy was a friend of the younger one’s mother. After some talk about mom the older guy said “so Danny, you’re in glasses now?” (as if this question needed answering) - and Danny kind of half laughed and ducked his head a little and said “yep, I’m getting old!” and the older guy smiled and said “that happens to us all”, but Danny immediately took off his glasses and stuck them in his shirt pocket, and the other guy changed the subject. Later I noticed Danny leaving and he put his glasses back on when he got out on the sidewalk. I understand how he feels - it’s can feel kind of awkward when people call attention to your new look. I’m glad to find I’m not the only one who feels like that.
Cactus Jack 28 Oct 2007, 16:40 Macrae I respectfully submit that the 55 year old didn’t have the foggiest notion of the many reasons why people need glasses. If the 25 year old was a little myopic, age probably had nothing to do with it. If you keep this up, you may become an OO and start noticing prescriptions and estimating strength. If you “bite the bullet” and make next week full time glasses wear, this will all be over and just be a pleasant memory. Of course you could prolong it, if you are enjoying it. We all wish you well and understand, I remember my first days at school with glasses (I was 14), but fortunately by then, many others were wearing glasses and the excitement and attention lasted about a day. C.
Willy 29 Oct 2007, 11:39 Macrae – For me it’s really the middle distances that seal the deal on wearing full-time. By middle, I don’t mean the mid-range of the progressive but those distances that are within, say, 20-50 feet – across the office or down the hall. Things that are really close up, I know I can’t see without correction but could use reading glasses, and while things that are really far away are definitely clearer with glasses, at least in daylight the difference is not so telling that the blurriness screams out. But watching TV across the room, or viewing a presentation in a conference room at work, I need the correction in the top part of the progressives. It seems to me that once you hit on a real need for the distance correction as well as the reading correction, there just isn’t any reason not to go full-time, to say nothing of the benefit of not losing or damaging the glasses when you are not wearing them.
Clare 29 Oct 2007, 12:23 Macrae Interesting to ponder the ‘happily bespectacled’ status of the masses. I’m sure you’re right. I think for the majority the glasses thing isn’t the issue that it is for some of us here. It may be a nuisance to have something perched on your nose all day and other than that I guess most just get on with it. Those who really hate them of course just get contacts. I can imagine playing this conversation past a friend of mine - glasses wearer since childhood her reaction would be surprise, if they help you see better she’d say why wouldn’t you wear them? I’d say it’s mostly to do with vanity.
Macrae 29 Oct 2007, 17:23 Clare: yes, you’re right, it’s all about vanity. Willy: for me the best thing has been the difference in how things look outdoors and in the distance. The signs, the leaves, the far away mountains all look great - and there’s no way I would want to drive without glasses now that I know the difference. Cactus Jack: I’m sure that many people don’t have “the foggiest notion of the many reasons why people need glasses.” I don’t know all the reasons myself. Until very recently I didn’t know that people who didn’t need glasses when they were young might ever need them for anything other than reading when they got older (I thought that since I got past my youth without glasses I was “safe”!) I do notice other people’s glasses, especially lately, but I don’t think I will start noticing prescriptions and estimating strength - because for me that doesn’t matter much. I understand that for lots of folks on this forum it does matter, sometimes a lot, and I also understand that as a farsighted person and a person with a smallish prescription somebody like me is not very exotic here. It’s like that license plate spotting game that kids play on long trips - with the sighting of the extremely nearsighted person (and his or her thick lenses) being the holy grail of the Alaska license plate, while me and my glasses are more like spotting a New York plate while driving through New Jersey. I do think glasses can be sexy on a lot of people - but most of the people I think this about would be pretty sexy without them too : ) As for me, I am kind of liking wearing glasses. Beyond the obvious benefit of not having a constant headache, I like waking up in the morning and seeing the blurry clock and reaching for my glasses and “Ping!” everything jumping into focus. I like how they look - I feel like my inner nerd is pretty happy with them, despite my protests - and weirdly enough I like the feeling of them. Now if I could just not dislike being seen in them so much, I’d be all set : )
Macrae 04 Nov 2007, 17:05 I’ve worn glasses all the time for the past week and they feel pretty normal now - or at least I’m not spending so much time thinking about them now. I still find myself being surprised at little things like walking into the kitchen in the dark and noticing how clear the digital clock numbers are on the stove. Unfortunately I’m also noticing the annoying aspects of wearing glasses all the time - they fog up, they get smudges on them no matter how careful I am about not doing anything to smudge them, and they get rained on. I took my glasses off for a while today and found that things now seem a little warpy without them, and it also made me feel weirdly taller. I guess maybe if I spent equal amounts of time with and without glasses my brain might eventually be able to save the two different “settings” and apply the right one to the right situation. But I got a headache pretty quickly without them, and anyway it was annoying to me that I couldn’t see as well, so I think I’ll just keep them on - except maybe outside in the rain. I was at my brother Greg’s house again yesterday helping him with a project, and this time he was wearing glasses when I got there. He said he liked my new frames, I told him about the progressive lenses, he tried them on and said he couldn’t see, I tried his on and noted that I couldn’t see, and that was the end of our glasses-related discussion. My sister-in-law said my glasses make me look “younger, and less stressed.” The younger part surprised me, since I associate needing glasses with entering my 40s, so maybe she’s just trying to be nice, but I think she’s right about the stress part. Headaches, blurriness, and runaway self-consciousness were stressful.
Geoff 10 Nov 2007, 03:56 Macrae, sounds like you are adjusting well to FT wear of glasses. Must be nice to receive comments that glasses make you look younger.
Macrae 11 Nov 2007, 09:49 Geoff: as I said, I think she was trying to be flattering when she said I looked younger. Also I’m wondering if maybe she likes glasses on men in general. She’s been very complimentary and interested in my glasses. I wonder if she had anything to do with encouraging my brother to stop wearing contacts all the time years ago. I’m pretty used to glasses all the time now. 97% of the time I’m not really noticing them. The other 3% of the time they are very annoying. Sometimes, late in the day especially, my nose starts to notice the feel of them more, and then I start to be more conscious of them, and all of a sudden they are so freakin’ annoying. Of course, there’s no harm in taking them off for a while - my prescription is small and for most purposes I can really see quite adequately without them. Without them I’m noticing much more the fuzziness of things - everything tends to have slight double edges, and general annoying smeariness. Usually that gets more intolerably annoying after a while as wearing them was in the first place, so I look for them to put back on. And if the fuzziness doesn’t make me put them on then the eventual headache always does. Somebody at work told me that he got a pair of dark frames like mine once and he couldn’t get used to seeing them in his field of vision all the time and had to go back to thinner, lighter colored metal frames (and now he has those totally rimless ones). That’s interesting, because for the most part I don’t notice the frames now. He said he asked his eye doctor about the monovision contact scheme and she said it probably wouldn’t work well for our line of work because it’s too near-vision oriented. She said if he did that he should have a pair of reading glasses to wear over the contacts to correct the “far” eye to the near prescription while he works. That sounds like a lot of trouble to me but maybe someday down the road I’ll give it a shot just to see how it works.
Cactus Jack 11 Nov 2007, 13:48 Macrae, You might consider dropping by your optician at the end of the day, after you have worn your glasses for an extended period, for a possible adjustment of your frames. Also, take a look in the mirror when they are bothering you to see if there are any red spots where there is excess pressure and advise the optician. C.
Marco 12 Nov 2007, 08:24 Mr. Macrae—since you needed reading glasses for presbyopia at a relative young age, did your eye doctor talk to you about the possibility of needing trifocals in the future? You probably will need a pretty strong add by the time you are fifty.
Macrae 12 Nov 2007, 09:25 Cactus Jack: thanks, that sounds like a good idea (that I should have thought of!). I’ll stop back at the glasses place soon. They don’t seem to be making any red marks, and they don’t hurt. They just get aggravating - I think they slide around a little. Marco: my eye doctor talked to me about the possibility of getting trifocals now! But I - being driven by equal parts vanity and dislike of the idea of line-induced “jumping” images - decided to try progressive lenses for now instead, and they are working very well for me (though I haven’t tried any trifocals for comparison’s sake). My optometrist had discussed with me that progressives don’t have as large of an area in the lens for clear close up vision as trifocals would, and that because I spend a lot of time on the computer and because of other visual demands at work I might not be happy with the limited field of close vision. But I decided to give it a shot, and I guess because the add is small it means that at this point the limited field and distortion problems are not as bad now as they might be with a larger add. Is 40 or 41 young to need reading glasses? If I need a pretty strong add at 50 - and if that mandates trifocals - then I’m sure I will get used to that too (I admit to quite a bit of vanity-induced resistance to glasses in general, but I’m also really enjoying seeing clearly and will probably always want to do whatever lets me see best - though it may be preceded by some protest and inner turmoil.) But 50 still sounds like a long way off and maybe there will be some latest/greatest technological breakthrough wonder-lens by then that will supplant the trifocal. We’ll see…
Cactus Jack 12 Nov 2007, 09:45 Macrae, 40 to 41 is not too young to need some help reading, particularly for a hyperope such as yourself. Your distance correction corrects your refractive error to 0.00. Some plus optical power is required to focus closer. The amount is determined by the formula 100 cm divided by the distance in cm. For example to focus at 100 cm requires +1.00, 50 cm requires +2.00 etc. When you are young, your crystalline lenses easily supply the plus (even the plus to correct your hyperopia) as you get older your crystalline lenses get stiff and they can’t supply enough plus and you need external plus either as a bi- or tri-focal add or separate glasses. However, unless you like to read really close, it will never get more than +3.00 or 3.25. The problem is that as you need more plus help, like a close up lens on a camera, the range of useful focus gets smaller and the mid range goes out of focus and you need an intermediate strength lens (thus trifocals or some tricky lens that provides the intermediate focus power). I know this will be disappointing, but what is happening to you is very normal for low hyperopes. You think you have exceptional vision and you do, like a slightly over corrected myope, and then presbyopia begins to rear its ugly head, and you discover the laws of optics apply to you also. It is a real letdown. However, you are dealing with it very well. Seeing well effortlessly is neat, isn’t it. Too bad so many people are reluctant to try it. C.
Marco 13 Nov 2007, 03:32 Mr. Macrae—you might want to purchase a pair of trifocals as your back-up glasses. In that way you could become more comfortable with the idea and look of wearing them. Do you look back now and think that you probably should have been wearing glasses years ago?
Macrae 13 Nov 2007, 19:07 Marco: I look back now and think I should have been wearing glasses some time ago, but I doubt I needed them many years ago. The first time somebody commented that I was holding things far away to read was about a year ago. It caught me by surprise - but once it was pointed out then it was obvious to me that it was not comfortable anymore to read anything closer. I don’t know how long that took to creep up - whether I had decent near vision months before or if it had been a year or two or more. And more recently I only ended up with glasses all the time when I finally realized that my eyes were giving me headaches - after thinking that it was an allergy or sinus problem - so again it wasn’t because I noticed any vision quality issue. I’m very happy with my new super-clear world view, but I don’t think my unaided vision is really all that bad. I can probably even pass a driver’s license vision test. So if it weren’t for the headaches I don’t think there’d even be a necessity for glasses all the time right now. It would just be more of a personal preference for clarity. I wrote before that I might have had some slight vision issues quite a while ago. I’ve ALWAYS seen lights as having starry/spiky patterns around them in the dark. I have a drawing that I did 20 years ago that shows that I saw them that way then. My glasses make those star patterns go away almost completely. So that might be some evidence that I could have used glasses years ago. But on the other hand, I saw an eye doctor when I was 15, after a minor injury (probably the last time I saw an eye doc, before last winter) and he said that I was a little farsighted but didn’t need glasses. He actually joked with my mom to “bring him back in 20 years for glasses.” So if I did have measurable vision issues that long ago they must have been very trivial. Maybe if that old eye doctor was right about the 20-year timing then I should have gotten glasses about 6 years ago…
Macrae 13 Nov 2007, 19:25 As for this trifocal idea: sorry Marco - I feel you’re enthusiastic about getting some trifocals on me - but I have really had enough of a project getting used to these current glasses and I think I’d rather not do the trifocals just yet. Try to understand from my point of view: until a few weeks ago I didn’t even consider myself to be a glasses-wearer (wearing reading glasses didn’t really count.) At this point glasses feel pretty normal - I don’t notice them most of the time. But that took awhile, and wearing glasses while walking around in the world felt very weird at first - seeing the frames all the time around everything made me feel a little walled off from the world or boxed in or something. It’s difficult to describe. I also felt very self-conscious and conspicuous. So when the eye doctor broached the idea of trifocals I did not like the sound of it - both because they’re a little more conspicuous and because having the lines in my field of vision seems like it would have made me feel even more walled off or “behind bars” or something like that. Now that I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with glasses in general I am not as horrified by the idea. I’m sure down the road I could get used to trifocals if they are the best choice then… I don’t really need any “backup glasses” right now. I still have the reading glasses I got last winter - they work better for the computer now, but help with reading.. And my distance vision isn’t bad, as I described below. I would guess everything vision-wise just keeps getting worse for awhile. So be patient and let the inevitable slide to decrepitude take its course :
Marco 14 Nov 2007, 03:30 Mr. Macrae, just found it interesting that your eye doctor broached the idea of trifocals with you. I wear them after struggling with progressives.
Macrae 14 Nov 2007, 17:07 Marco, what do you like about your trifocals, or how are they better than progressives? How hard is it to get used to the lines? Do you stop noticking the lines? People here did try to discourage me (or at least warn me) that progressives might be difficult to adapt to or not suit my occupational needs. Even the people in the glasses shops I visited weren’t overly optimistic that they’d work out well for me. I think those reasons were why my eye doctor had mentioned the option of trifocals in the first place. I just chose to see if progressives worked first. So I made sure I could exchange the lenses if I couldn’t get used to them. When I got them I kept waiting for big problems, but I only had a few small problems. I wrote about some initial issues with depth perception (at first things at arm’s length weren’t always quite where I thought, but that resolved in 3 or 4 days). I had to change a few habits - like stop lying on the couch with my laptop computer on top of me, and stop watching tv lying on my side - because I just can’t see that way. The first couple times I went to the grocery store I couldn’t find the right spot in the lenses or the right angle of my head or something to look at things on lower store shelves. But then one day I went shopping and realized I was almost done and hadn’t even thought about my glasses or vision. So it seems to be working well for me for now. Of course maybe it’s because of my frame of reference: my vision seems great now because it’s so much better than without glasses. But if maybe I’d already been wearing regular single-vision glasses that worked great for distance and then had to switch to these more complicated, distortion-prone lenses I might not be as happy with that comparison…
Eye Tri 15 Nov 2007, 02:16 Macrae, Once you’ve worn trifocals for a day or two you don’t notice the lines. In fact, you have to actually look for them to see them. What I like best about them is the large viewing area at arm’s length. I work as a motorcycle mechanic, and that is where I do much of my work. Another asset is cost. My lenses cost less than half of what I paid for progressives.
Marco 15 Nov 2007, 03:32 Mr. Macrae, I agree with the previous post—you get used to trifocals quickly. The great thing is working on the computer—the middle lens is superior to progressives for that task–and no distortion. The lines were not noticeable to me and others never mentioned them. Seriously, trifocals might be worth thinking about further. I think others on this thread would agree that trifocals are very good.
Macrae 15 Nov 2007, 16:46 Thanks for the information Marco and Eye Tri. I don’t think I’ll be looking into (or through) trifocals in the very near future, but maybe in a few years… As I understand it this vision thing is all down hill from here, right? Every couple of years I go back to the eye doctor for thicker glasses? If so then I’m sure I’ll get plenty more opportunities to try all the possibilities. (Do you think I can get trifocal, astigmatism-correcting, sun-reacting contacts? Preferably in green?)
Marco 16 Nov 2007, 03:27 Mr. Macrae, you are right—there will be plenty of opportunities to switch into trifocals. Regular visits to the eye doctor are now a fact of life.
Geoff 17 Nov 2007, 04:26 Sorry that I wasn’t around for this trifocal discussion as I am a big fan of traditional bifocal and trifocal lenses. Macrae, I think you will appreciate the superior vision that these type of glasses provide.
Kent 17 Nov 2007, 07:35 Once again, you all have Macrae in trifocals when he’s perfectly happy in his progressives, which he just got a few weeks ago. He’s fine with those. Why are you trying to make him feel that he needs something else? What’s in it for you? Are you “trifocal missionaries” or something?
Julian 17 Nov 2007, 07:59 Kent, I do agree with you. When will some people learn that, so to speak, what’s sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander? I wore bifocals for ten years and have been in progressives for nearly twenty without any problems. My latest glasses (about six weeks ago) have narrower lenses that I’ve had before, and I thought I might have to keep my old ones handy for certain tasks, but not a bit of it. The only exception is reading in bed, which does really need single vision reading specs.
Macrae 17 Nov 2007, 12:44 Thanks Kent and Julian for defending the right to wear progressives : ) And here I thought that by avoiding getting glasses until my forties I had avoided the ubiquitous childhood playground “glasses bullies” - only to meet up with the middle-aged Trifocal Bullies, an even more fearsome bunch. Must…resist…peer…pressure. Can’t…cave…in…to…hideous…trifocals! Just kidding. It’s ok - everybody can keep convincing me of the merits of trifocals and I may try them out in a couple years. For now my handy-dandy home visionometer (otherwise known as the digital clock on the stove) tells me I see great with my current glasses. Granted, if I get within a certain range of that clock and look at it from somewhat of a sideways direction rather than head on then there’s some discernible distortion. However, it’s shockingly, stunningly clearer than if I stand in the same place and look at the clock with no glasses. My no-glasses vision has gotten just horrible in the few weeks since I started wearing glasses all the time - especially in a situation like the stove clock that involves illuminated numbers on a dark background, relatively close up. I do understand the mechanics of this - that it isn’t really that my eyes have deteriorated suddenly because of glasses - it’s just that now that they have the right lenses in front of them the muscles that were struggling to fix the focus before have been able to just give up completely, and now I can’t even find those muscles to focus with. Maybe it was a bad idea to get glasses after all - because if I manage to get into a life or death situation that requires reading a digital clock in the dark, while trapped inside a box with no side greater than 4’ long, clearly I’m done for…
Cactus Jack 17 Nov 2007, 15:30 Macrae, In very corrupt and fractured latin, “Non illegitamus carborundum”. Which is supposed to mean “Don’t let the ba****ds grind you down”. Frankly, I don’t think we have or will. Most of us have read of your well-written evolution from denial, to apprehension, to discovery, and on to appreciation of the results, which refreshed memories of our own. To some extent, most of us went through the same stages in varying degrees and came to the similar conclusion, that having good vision beats not having good vision, hands down - vanity be damned. I don’t think anyone is actually trying to force you into trifocals, we only want to make you aware that there may come a time and circumstance where you need a larger, distortion free intermediate lens area. (In my case, it was having to work with “D” sized blue prints, without crawling on the table to read what was at the top of the sheet (which is a bit more embarrassing than some very thin lines in your glasses). Hopefully, if that situation arises, you will know what to do without frustration or apprehension. We’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt (and the glasses), and wondered later what all the worry was about. Also, we may have a tiny ulterior motive. The accounts of your adventures were so well written that we are sad that the story is almost complete and we don’t want it to end - like the last Harry Potter book. Best regards, C.
Julian 17 Nov 2007, 23:58 That’s really well put, Cactus. It will be a sad day when we can’t look forward to another instalment from Macrae - and, Macrae, thanks for following your story through and not leaving us wondering what we did to upset you!
Macrae 18 Nov 2007, 13:46 Thank you Cactus Jack and Julian! I’m flattered that you’ve enjoyed my adventures. For me this has been a way to work out my feelings about the experience. I’ve found the audience here to be a little more helpful and attuned to my feelings about this than maybe the average friend or co-worker has been. I know I’ve been a little more fixated on and traumatized by this whole getting glasses episode than is really normal or warranted. My friends and acquaintances, if they reacted at all, merely noted the debut of my glasses, and probably changed their mental image of me accordingly and never gave it another thought. But on this forum people have been a little more willing to indulge me in my temporary obsession with glasses and my struggle to wear them comfortably, and for that I’m very appreciative. You’re right - my saga is probably near its end, because even if I wanted to draw out the narrative much longer, I’m just not really feeling the same apprehension and self-consciousness that gave me things to write about a month or two ago. It’s good for me that glasses have begun to feel natural and routine, but it’s not too good for the outlook of my little writing project here. But, if you’ve been following my ramblings for a while then you know that for me the most stressful and suspenseful part of this story by far has revolved around my irrational and childish fear of my family’s reaction, and that remains unresolved. On the one hand it should be easier now than when I steeled up the nerve to wear glasses to my brother’s house a couple months back. I’m much more used to wearing them now and they don’t feel strange. On the other hand, that experience was made much easier by the unexpected revelation that my brother was sort of a closet four-eyes himself. I don’t think I can expect to luck out that way again. And that encounter only involved the reaction of one brother, whereas I am going away on Wednesday to my mom’s place for Thanksgiving and expect to see a large number of family members all in one place. If I summon up the nerve to get this all over with once and for all then I will probably be back next week to tell you how it all ended (and then I get to live happily bespectacled ever after). Of course if I chicken out and put my glasses away before I get there then I could keep doing that forever and the story, pointless and repetitive as it would be, would never end.
Cactus Jack 18 Nov 2007, 14:20 Macrae, I’m almost willing to bet that your brother is not the only other one in your family who wears glasses, at least part time. Remember, you do not wear glasses for the benefit of others - unless your Rx is so high that you run into them without. Your Rx is not even close to that. C.
Macrae 18 Nov 2007, 14:44 No, my brother’s not the only one in my family that wears glasses. It’s just that because he’d always avoided wearing them around me - and then I found out that he actually does wear them most of the time EXCEPT around me and the rest of the family, and has been doing so for 12 years (!) - I was amused to have kind of caught him in the act of hiding this from us (he always wore contacts around us, so we just assumed he always wore contacts, period. But apparently he always wears glasses, except around us). Somehow that revelation made the whole experience easier (and funnier) for me. I just meant that I probably can’t count on discovering another family member behaving that crazily, to distract from my own crazy self-consciousness this time… My brother’s wife and my stepfather and stepsister wear glasses all the time, and my mom has worn reading glasses (the drugstore kind, I think) for probably 25 years. And maybe other family members have glasses that I don’t know about - especially if they’re part-time. I don’t know why I worry about wearing mine around them - just that I do. I know that you’re right that I wear them for me, and don’t need to care about what anyone else thinks about it. I’m pretty sure I will just wear them and get it over with. I’ll keep the forum posted on what happens.
Macrae 24 Nov 2007, 18:56 The Reading Game, Part 1 I’m back from my Thanksgiving trip. Things didn’t go precisely as envisioned, but I’ve finally been seen in my glasses by everybody whose judgement I ever feared, and I am indeed free to live “happily bespectacled ever after”. You might remember that several weeks back when I discovered that my brother was himself a semi-secret glasses wearer I suggested to him that we could both get this out in the open and over with at the same time by wearing our glasses when we saw everyone at Thanksgiving. He was non-commital and I didn’t bring it up again. He’s worn his glasses around me since then, but I wasn’t sure if he’d stick with his previous contacts-only policy around the rest of the family. Regardless, I’ve been determined all along to keep my own glasses on and get this done with. Well… I was determined when I started the trip on Wednesday… But along the 5-hour drive I started to get that nervous-sick feeling again, and as I got closer to my destination the big coward voice in my head started saying “you know, you don’t have to do this tonight… just take them off. You can always put them on tomorrow…” The reasonable, grownup me voice said “Oh just get over yourself already and stop thinking like an 8-year old. Just leave them on and quit worrying about it. What’s the worst that can happen? Mom says ‘hey, you got glasses!’ So what? It needs to happen sometime, might as well be now.” But the coward voice won. It was of course also the coward who thought of taking them off half an hour in advance so there wouldn’t be any nose marks. When I got there I saw Greg’s car already in the drive. Mom and Alan were in the living room with Greg and wife and kids. Greg was wearing glasses. Whatever reaction that had provoked, if any, was over with already and he’d apparently survived it. “See?”, said the reasonable voice in my head, “it could have been that simple, but now you’ve gone and missed the chance to do this the easy way…” As I was saying my hellos to everyone Greg managed to convey, through a particular scowl and eye roll, the silent question “where the hell are your glasses, you hypocrite?” - and I shrugged and tried to look suitably guilty, ashamed, and sheepish. Then he smiled and I thought he was being understanding. For the next 15 minutes or so I didn’t think any more about glasses. But Greg began to implement an evil plan…
Macrae 24 Nov 2007, 19:00 The Reading Game, part 2 He started asking me to read things. All sorts of things. Everything and anything around me with words on it. He asked me to read the weather report in the newspaper on the coffee table. I threw him the paper instead. He asked me to read holiday cards on the fireplace mantel, the TV schedule, and the care directions on a tag stuck into a flower pot. I wasn’t sure if his goal was to force me to put on glasses, or expose my middle-aged vision by making me hold something at arm’s length, or make me say, “I can’t read that.” But the more objects he demanded I read, the more I was determined not to do any of those things. I tossed the greeting cards and the TV schedule to him to read for himself - and then a magazine, and an atlas after that. I pulled out the plant tag and peered at it very closely, and told him it said “Indirect light, moist soil” (I have no idea what it actually said, but I was sure he didn’t either.) This reading project continued, off and on amongst much other conversation, for an hour. It became apparent to me that Alan and my sister-in-law had become aware of and understood the game. Greg asked me what time it was, though I was sure he’d been wearing a watch earlier. Rather than be caught squinting at my watch at arm’s length I asked my niece Emily if she knew how to tell time, and stuck my watch toward her. She rolled her eyes and said “Duh! I’m six!” but she also told us the time. I smirked at Greg. He scowled. In the kitchen he asked me to read something etched on the glass door of the toaster oven on the counter next to me. I could not have read it without stepping backward, so instead I looked very closely and invented “In case of fire unplug cord.” He said “hmm… is that so?” and I realized that he could probably read what it really said from the other side of the kitchen table with his glasses on, while I couldn’t read it standing next to it without mine. I said “Well that’s the gist of it”. My mother said, “Greg, stop tormenting your brother!” - but then she turned around, winked at him, and asked me to read her the expiration date on a coupon stuck to the fridge door! So I knew I was busted, but I was too stubborn and embarrassed to give up yet, so I said “It’s expired” and then I escaped the kitchen.
Macrae 24 Nov 2007, 19:04 The Reading Game, part 3 But at the dining room table they were relentless. They asked me to read ingredients on salad dressing bottles and the sodium content on a pickle jar. They asked me to read the words printed in the design on a pot-holder, and to see in what country the butter dish was made. I managed to read the pickle jar label from what I thought was not conspicuously far away, due to a favorable confluence of font size, contrast, and lighting conditions. (Ha!) The pot-holder is old and familiar from childhood and I knew that the design is of little crocks and jars that say “chamomile” and “chives” on them. I made up plausible salad dressing ingredients and a birthplace for the butter dish - not that I thought I was fooling anyone. I just thought that sooner or later they’d run out of objects within reach of me - and I really hoped so, because by now I had a headache. That was the longest I’ve gone without glasses in a month and I missed them. After a few hours my eyes were getting blinky and teary and I was thinking maybe I didn’t want to keep this up for the rest of the night, let alone four days. Greg said “there’s a calculator on the shelf behind you. See what size battery it takes.” And I said, “why on earth do you need to know that?” and he said “to confirm a hunch.” So I grabbed the calculator and prepared to toss it to him, but mom said “Do NOT throw that across my dining room table!” So I popped off the cover, and what I could see was that there was no way that I was going to be able to make out the tiny blur of silver-on-silver numbers without holding it at arms length in bright light - if even then. So I turned to Emily next to me and asked her if she knew her numbers and letters. But Emily had apparently had enough of my condescension for one evening, and she rolled her eyes and sighed and said: “Uncle Mac, just put on your glasses!” Everybody burst out laughing and I felt my face turn red and buried my head in my arms on the table in defeat. But I had to laugh too. I said “that’s a very sensible idea, Emily” and I went and got them out of my coat pocket and put them on and took a deep breath and went back to the dining room and read the calculator battery number for Greg. “That’s what I thought”, he said. They all laughed some more and I felt very foolish. Alan said I looked “distinguished”. I said “That’s polite for ‘old’”. Mom said, “You look older when you hold everything three feet away.” I said, “I wasn’t doing that!” Mom said, “Honey, you’ve been doing that for two years”. Two years?? So that means she’s known I need glasses since before I knew… Figures.
Macrae 24 Nov 2007, 19:08 The Reading Game, part 4 That all happened on Wednesday. I wore glasses the rest of the evening. I put them on again first thing Thanksgiving morning, and nobody said anything else about it, or about Greg’s either, until the rest of the family started arriving later. Then we both got a few comments - mostly just acknowledgment, like “hey, you got glasses”. After the torture of the night before the small amount of attention wasn’t a big deal and I didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore. My cousin asked if I have to wear them all the time and when I said most of the time she gave me a sad look that meant “oh you poor thing” - and that was really the most negative reaction to glasses that I’ve ever gotten so far. I told her it’s really OK - I like seeing! Jason (our other brother) asked if Greg and I had coordinated our look ahead of time. I said no. But Greg proceeded to recap “the reading game” for Jason, who rightfully scoffed at my vanity and stubbornness. I didn’t say anything about Greg’s own long covert glasses-wearer history, but I gave him a look that meant that I might if he didn’t quit picking on me. Jason asked to try on our glasses, and I did kind of hope that maybe he’d discover that he needed some too, but through Greg’s glasses he said everything was too tiny, and with mine he said everything was big and slanted, and then he took them off and said “just right”. So I tried to taunt him: “Well you’re 39 - your glasses are probably coming in a year or two” - but he didn’t seem even mildly horrified by the idea, which disappointed me just a little. Tonight Alan emailed some photos of us all. It’s the first time I’ve seen me with glasses in a picture, and the pictures are reassuring in that my glasses sure don’t look as big and scary and image-changing as they have felt in my imagination for the last couple months. But now that I’m finally, comfortably, publicly bespectacled, I feel a little at a loss at having one of my biggest irrational fears resolved. Sure, there’s that little nagging threat of trifocals that you guys have worked hard to instil in me, but it seems far away and truthfully not all that scary. I think maybe I’m a recreational worrier, and I’m not sure what to torment myself over (or write about) now. Maybe this year’s New Year’s resolution should be to look into getting braces…
zzzzzzzzzz 25 Nov 2007, 02:56 BORING, how old are you? Such a fuss about wearing glasses..
@macrae 25 Nov 2007, 10:43 without any offense, it’s really interesting that a grown-up man makes a giant monster problem out of wearing glasses. Can’t believe.
OttO 25 Nov 2007, 13:04 Too bad that some individuals think so little of themselves that they have nothing better to do than make fun of others. So boring. If they cannot show a little respect for others, they should just go away.
OttO 25 Nov 2007, 13:36 Well said Macrae. Easy to relate to your adventures in becoming bespectacled. I especially liked your story about the family get together at Thanksgiving. Put a smile on my face. Chuckled all the way through. As one of six siblings myself I can relate. Since you are now a full time glasses wearer you probably won’t get many comments. Something to do with middle age and the fact that most people need correction by then? As for trifocals, I made the switch from bifocals two years ago. No one said anything. I wonder if anyone even noticed. Any apprehension was all in my head.
matthew 25 Nov 2007, 17:13 @ Otto (plus macrae) I just said that IMO it’s interesting a grown up man makes such a problem out of such a cause as wearing glasses. And I added “no offense but…” in the beginning so that should make it clear - I am sorry, but it’s an opinion you should respect too. I do not think little of myself as you said, but if somebody makes 20 posts about something as Macrae did, I might have the right to comment it. As I said, no offense but my honest opinion. Sorry, but I did not offend any chattiquette or something - I just think he’s what, middle age, so about 40-50 maybe and is still SO scared of his parents and family to see him wearing glasses? C’mon sorry don’t blame me but like it or not, there are some people who think this is a bit odd and like to comment it, as this is a discussion forum, so don’t be so self-righteous and say that everyone who says something against it has a low opinion of themselves or something…
Julian 26 Nov 2007, 01:56 Matthew: I for one have enjoyed every minute of Macrae’s saga (20 posts? I make it 49!) For those of us who like glasses or are obsessed with them his experience of getting them and starting to wear them full time is fascinating, and the stages of the interaction between him and his brother Greg have been quite hilarious. Finally, he tells his story superbly well. Macrae: just one thought - if your brother Jason has the same kind of schoolboy attitude (I mean that kindly) as you and Greg, aren’t his comments after trying both your glasses EXACTLY the ones he’d have made if he’d just seen everything clearly for the first time in years?
Marco 26 Nov 2007, 03:38 Mr. Macrae, thanks for your recount of Thanksgiving. When you are in your 40’s, glasses are the norm for all. Just keep at it. BTW, what is your prescription?
charles 26 Nov 2007, 08:15 Maybe this thread have to change for “Macrae forum”…?
VFL 26 Nov 2007, 09:01 Oh, Macrae… This is EXACTLY what I went through. My parents nearly fainted when they first saw me in glasses. (They both wear them…), but… God bless you for being this honest. VFL
Macrae 29 Nov 2007, 16:22 49 posts, wow. MIght as well make it an even 50, right? r.o.: I’ll give them your regards. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz: I am 41, and the first to admit I’ve made an inordinate fuss over glasses. I’m sorry you’re bored. But you know, I bet very few people come to the “Hyperopia and Presbyopia Progression” forum in search of riveting entertainment. I thought my story might appeal to a few of the sort who do. Oh well, as they say: suum cuique pulchrum est. matthew: I would be the first to agree that the situation is “a bit odd”. But, if I’d instantly adapted to wearing glasses and thought no more of it then I probably never would have visited this forum in the first place - and neither would most of the people who’ve ever been here. Hang around any “special interest” venue and you’re bound to meet some weirdos… OttO: thank you for the kind and understanding words. Julian: thank you, I’m very happy to know that you enjoyed my story. I’m sure you’re right that Jason’s comments could be exactly those of someone in denial. But they could also be those of someone with 20/20 vision, and I can’t tell the difference. I have less of an intuitive understanding of him, whereas Greg can raise an eyebrow and I can tell what he’s thinking - and it seems he can do the same with me. I will watch Jason closely for vision defects (and I’ll watch for signs that Greg needs bifocals or I need trifocals) and keep you posted. Marco: Thanks for the encouragement. My prescription is really quite small. Something like +1.25, and some astigmatism, and a small reading add. I posted it a few weeks ago, so it’s down there somewhere. Charles: I do apologize for turning this into The Macrae Show. And I’m almost done with that ; ) VFL: thanks! I must say I’m surprised that you went through exactly the same thing. I hear that type of reaction is a bit odd. Please, will you tell me your story of wearing glasses around your family for the first time? dixie guest: Ah yes, you must. And tell us all about it. Willy: You know, you might be able to drive her to the optometrist somewhat sooner if you pester her to read things…
Geoff 01 Dec 2007, 15:24 Macrae, you can look forward to your brothers struggling with arms too short and wearing those first bifocals. What goes around comes around.
Cactus Jack 02 Dec 2007, 10:01 I have come to believe that middle aged, low hyperopes, such as Macrae, can have more psychological problems with their first glasses than teen aged myopes and I believe this can be fairly easily explained. Low hyperopes, without correction, constantly enjoy the same visual experience as a mildly over corrected myope, as long as they have adequate focusing range. They have very sharp, vivid vision, which they come to believe is unusually good. Some are secretly proud of their “exceptional” vision. Others are somewhat outspoken about the fact that they can see much better than their weak eyed, glasses wearing associates. Of course, they don’t quite understand, that they had nothing to do with it. (Skill is not involved in winning a lottery). As you might expect, it comes as quite a shock when, in their 30s or early 40s, presbyopia begins to rear its head and they find out they need glasses or even bifocals - sometimes at an “unusually early” age, depending on the degree of hyperopia. It is particularly difficult if there are competitive siblings to “rub it in”, when they finally give in and get glasses. Those of us who have worn glasses since our childhood or teens should be a bit more understanding, as they join our ranks. It can be a worrisome experience when confronting associates while wearing glasses for the first time, at any age and any Rx (as many posts have related). I think it is good to have a place such as Eyescene where first time glasses wearers can share their concerns and experiences with those who have been there and done that. Hopefully, we can help make their transition to wearing vision correction less traumatic. C.
Macrae 02 Dec 2007, 19:37 Besides “psychological problems” I think we middle-aged hyperopes might sometimes have more physical difficulty seeing with glasses initially than the teenaged myopes. As far as I can tell, most of you nearsighted people got glasses one day and instantly saw clearly. And when you take them off you have blurry distance vision, right? so it’s probably pretty easy to figure out the questions of when and how much to wear them? But when I first got glasses I was told something like they “should” help with all distances, and then couldn’t see clearly in the distance with them on, because my eye muscles wouldn’t release their death grip, which was in turn creating eyestrain-induced headaches. There was a whole stage of making myself wear glasses all the time, waiting for those eye muscles to learn to relax, and during that time my distance vision was worse with glasses. The whole thing was sort of counter-intuitive, and then the eye doctor still had to cut back the original prescription a little before I could really see well and finally have that “aha, I can see!” experience. That whole process was confusing and not fun. At this point there’s no question that I can see better at all distances with glasses. But I don’t see so horribly badly without them that I feel like I couldn’t walk around in the world and function without them – except that every time I try that the headache comes back very soon. So I feel kind of stuck with glasses all the time because of the headache (and red, teary, painful eyes) - not because of poor vision directly. I don’t think it works that way if you’re nearsighted, does it? It seems like if you have only a small amount of nearsightedness you can take your glasses off much of the time with no ill effects, and you might be able to read when you get older just by taking off your glasses, and taking them off doesn’t give you a headache, does it?
Julian 03 Dec 2007, 02:22 Macrae: as a fellow hyperope I think you’re right on the whole; but do remember that lots of myopes have astigmatism too, quite a lot of it in some cases.
Hyperopic Guest 03 Dec 2007, 04:49 I am in the same situation as you are. I got my first glasses a month a go, at the age of 39. Hyperopic L +0.75 R +0.50 How long does it take to get that “aha, I can see” experience? Hyperopic Guest
Charlotte 03 Dec 2007, 11:38 macrae I am nearsighted (-2.25/-2.50) when I take my glasses off for a long period I get a headache. That’s because I have a slight muscle imbalance in one eye and my glasses correct it. I don’t have prisms but the doctor said headache is caused by the muscle imbalance. Has anyone else heard of this before?
Macrae 03 Dec 2007, 17:14 Willy: what does you wife think about your glasses? Charlotte and Julian: yeah, you’re right, it’s not that simple. I just meant that only 80% of my glasses problems were psychological and/or sibling-induced. The other 20% of the problems were physiological. Hyperopic Guest: do you wear your glasses all the time? If they’re for distance (not prescribed just for reading) then I think your eyes are supposed to gradually adapt to them and some day you should notice that your distance vision is clear with them. But the reason I had a specific “aha, I can see!” moment was because my optometrist cut back my prescription a little because I insisted I just couldn’t see in the distance with the original prescription, even after weeks of wearing them all the time. When I put this current pair of glasses on in the optician’s I could suddenly see amazingly well. That was great.
Hyperopic Guest 04 Dec 2007, 06:41 Macrae My optometrist wants me to wear my glasses all the time. It feels a little strange to wear glasses permanent, but not for seeing clearly. I have always had perfect distant vision, better then any other person I now. I have tested my eyes several times but they haven’t found anything. Now after 39 years of eyestrains I have been diagnosed hyperopic and sentenced to a life with glasses. I have eyestrain and headaches and the optometrist thinks they will go away if I go for constant wear. When I put my glasses on It feels fantastic. I can for the first time in my life read and write without eyestrain but in the distance it is a little blurry.
Carlos, Jr 04 Dec 2007, 17:38 Macrae, my eye doctor prescribed bifocals for me at the tender age of 39. I wore them for about 6 months, but then decided to check into contacts. Have been wearing bifocal contacts for over a year and am very pleased. They were a nice answer to my vanity.
Macrae 05 Dec 2007, 15:57 Hyperopic Guest: I have the same problem with headaches when I don’t wear glasses, and the reason that I got them to wear all or most of the time was because of the headaches and not because I noticed problems with my distance vision, so I understand what you’re saying about that feeling strange. I had the same problem with things in the distance being blurry with glasses. My optometrist told me to wear my glasses full time for a couple of weeks to try to relax my eyes to what he had determined to be the correct prescription. Over those weeks I did notice that the “blurry point” moved significantly further outward. And the headaches went away when I wore them. But, I never did get to the point where everything far away was clear with those glasses. I couldn’t wear them to drive, for instance. I went back to the optometrist but saw a different doctor in the same office, and while he determined more or less the same prescription as the first doctor, he listened to me when I told him things were just too blurry in the distance with that prescription, and he gave me one that is a little weaker for distance (but I ended up with progressives, so I can see up close too.) My non-glasses vision is worse now than before - because wearing them has made my eye muscles get “lazy” - I can’t really find the muscles that I was using before to focus all the time - but that’s just the price of the headache fix. I understand what you’re saying about feeling “sentenced to life” - I kind of felt that way too - but really now that I’ve been wearing them a couple months and worked through all my self-consciousness I don’t mind them at all (it’s not any worse than being sentenced to a life of wearing shoes.) And considering the alternate sentence of unrelenting headaches I much prefer glasses. Carlos, Jr.: How are bifocal contacts? I’m not sure I can learn to stick things in my eyes, and I’m pretty much at peace with glasses now from a vanity standpoint. But I’m a little curious to try contacts someday down the road. Trifocals too.
Hyperopic guest 05 Dec 2007, 23:47 Macrae//Thank you for your supportive reply. I am glad to know that I am not alone. It gives me hope to struggle with my world of constant blur. I am new to this website, and I think its fantastic. But I wonder one thing, Why are almost all fantastic stories about myopic things? Is farsightedness to unattractive to write about? Is there any other site on the web for plussies? Thank you for your support. Hyperopic Guest
Macrae 07 May 2008, 19:25 My rocky relationship with my glasses continues: last weekend I snapped one of the “arms” off them and broke its hinge (yardwork incident). The optical place is looking into getting a replacement part. Meanwhile at work I’ve been wearing my old glasses some, though don’t feel quite right - and I’ve been going bare-eyed a lot, but that doesn’t feel right either and makes me feel a little edgy/cranky. At home I’m wearing the broken pair balanced on my nose with one side missing. Next time I pick out new glasses maybe I should base my choice on indestructibility - regardless of dorkification factor (can’t get much more dorky than broken glasses, except maybe broken-and-taped-together glasses…)
Macrae 08 Sep 2008, 17:49 Last weekend I was on a camping trip with my brother Jason and he asked to try on my glasses again. Jason is the non-glasses-wearing brother, and this is at least the third time he’s asked to try them since I got my glasses. Since others on this forum had already put it into my head that Jason might be in denial about needing glasses - and since I’m no longer as squirmy and uncomfortable about all discussions glasses-related as I was on the previous occasions - I pursued the matter a little further this time. After he went through the on-off routine with the glasses for a few minutes, and through some closing of one eye and then the other, and some looking at various things close up, and some head-tilting one way and another, all while sliding the glasses to various positions up and down his nose, I finally asked “well what’s the verdict?” I was expecting he’d say, “I don’t need glasses”, or that my glasses didn’t do much, which is what he said after the last try-on session. But he tilted his head and said, “I always wanted glasses when I was a kid.” “Really?!”, I laughed. I wasn’t expecting that, but it figures. “OK” I said, “then how many fingers am I holding up?” But he thought that was too easy, so I conducted some other tests, near and far. Interestingly he seemed to be able to see just fine through my glasses - while other people who’ve tried them say they can’t see very well with them. So I wasn’t really sure how to interpret these exam results. But I asked, “Do you still want glasses?” He said, “Well… I think I finally need reading glasses. I’m 40”, which didn’t exactly answer my question. I said “Yeah, you’re 40. You should get some glasses.” It seemed like he was actually happy with that idea. And I’m not quite sure if he really does need them or if he thinks turning 40 gives him permission to finally get some glasses that he always wanted…
Julian 11 Sep 2008, 16:34 Macrae: if Jason can see clearly at a distance with your glasses, I reckon he has to be hyperopic rather than just presbyopic; so his childhood dream could come true, with all three brothers full time in glasses!
Macrae 03 Nov 2008, 15:51 My brother Jason (the glasses-less one) sent an email a couple days ago in which he announced that, in the face of incessant pressure from me, he’d finally given in and visited the optometrist, where he was predictably prescribed glasses. (Note that “incessant pressure” on my part consisted in its entirety in my allowing this brother to try on my glasses and agreeing with him - as he seemed to want me to - that he may very well benefit from some glasses of his own, having reached the ripe old age of 40.) In his email, which he also sent to Greg and to a couple friends, he attached three pictures of himself in different frames and asked us to vote on his new look, with the caveat that his wife reserves the right of veto. I voted on some rimless stubby rectangle-shaped lenses with black wire bridge and “arms”. I wish I’d thought of this vote-on-the-pictures thing when I got glasses. It avoids the awkwardness of just showing up one day with glasses - plus he can blame us for our choice of frames if he ends up funny looking I wrote back congratulating him on his oldness, and chastising him for copying everything I do. But I haven’t asked any questions about the prescription or anything else.
Macrae 10 Mar 2009, 13:41 Rachel, yes, my middle brother did get himself some glasses. I saw him at Thanksgiving and he was not wearing them all the time - he’s doing the on-off thing with them, using them mostly for reading. I tried them on of course - they are not strictly reading glasses, they have progressive lenses and somewhere similar in prescription to mine, though not an exact match.