Would I be THIS hot with glasses? Meh.

Do you wear glasses? It seems like a decent proportion of the population do. If my unscientific, empirical study of looking around sometimes (leave the hardcore, well researched science for lectures) and thinking, “shit, a lot of people wear glasses” (I’m all eloquent like that, my parents are very proud) counts for anything then I have definitive evidence that a non negligible number of the population wear glasses. It seems that a lot of people don’t have 20/20 vision. As a side note, that’s a phrase that I find odd. Anyone who has good eyes says they have that; but I thought it was only those with perfect vision. I guess it’s like the way everyone over 5ft10 tells you that they’re 6ft.

I think a guy I used to get the train to school with put it elegantly one cold, rainy morning when he said: “Having crap eyes would be well annoying”. At the time, my eyes weren’t yet “crap”, so I smirked along with him, laughing at those inferior specimens of humanity. Then, when I was about 17, it turned out I needed glasses. Karma’s a bitch.

Now I move on to my dilemma and why I turned to contact lenses. My eyesight is not great, but it’s just about good enough to be able to function without glasses from a visual standpoint, although perhaps socially it’s another story. For example, I know that things that are blurry shouldn’t be blurry. I can see that the sign has writing on it, but I can’t read the writing. My eyes are such a tease.

Sometimes, I think I’d prefer it if there was no hope of seeing someone’s face clearly from a short distance, rather than sharp focus being just about out of my reach. So, my eyes exist in an irritating in-between zone. If they were a bit worse I would resign myself to the fact that I just don’t have great eyesight, and if they were slightly better I wouldn’t even notice. It’s basically the optical equivalent of being in the Friend Zone with that girl/guy you really like. Thinking about it, the ultimate all or nothing, win or lose, glory or failure solution to both problems probably involves copious consumption of alcohol. I’ve heard horror stories about LASER eye surgery. If I ever have that then I’m going medieval in terms of anesthetic – just in case.

Putting contrived analogies aside for a second, there is another solution to the bad eyes that doesn’t involve glasses. During the summer, I actually managed to achieve one of the things I had planned: I tried contact lenses. Saying that, I did do it right at the end of the summer, so it’s only a partial victory for pro-activeness.

Why would I do such a thing when my current glasses work fine and are hipsterlicious? I can feel my bespectacled brothers and sisters reading in disgust, thinking I’m a vain sell out. Partially true, but also it’s just nice to not have to carry around glasses and feel lost if you don’t have them.

I’m not going to say that they have immediately revolutionized my life. Mainly because, at the minute, it takes an extended period of humming the Rocky theme tune for me to pluck up the courage to put them in. Also, I don’t trust myself to be able to remove them while drunk; wearing them on a night out is therefore not yet an option. Hopefully, practice makes perfect. They do, however, have one trump card: at first, every time you are wearing them, you think about how awesome it is that everything is now essentially in HD without the aid of glasses. My contact lenses do seem to want to remind me of this fact, by starting to go intermittently blurry after I’ve worn them for a few consecutive hours.

The take home message is this: book an appointment and try contact lenses. If you’re squeamish about touching your eye, don’t worry, a lot of people are, you’ll get over it. Once you do you will feel like an absolute boss. Besides, during the start of term, when work is at a relative minimum, it is the best time to take the plunge.

Wait, that last sentence was transferrable advice.