Glasses

When I was a kid, it seemed part of the equipment a person needs to hide behind. I wore mirrored biker shades, and it reflected back the people who would look at me. I can take care of myself, thank you. If you want something to concentrate on, concentrate on yourself.

But I had to give them up. Besides the fact that I was constantly losing them, or sitting on them, when I became a photographer they just didn’t work right. If you look through a viewfinder with sunglasses on, you can’t focus. You also can’t see the edges of the frame. All of the interesting stuff usually happens on the edge of the frame. I tried leaving them on, and then taking them off when I wanted to take a picture. This didn’t work. My eyes were constantly adjusting back and forth, and by the time I got it together the picture was gone.

So I gave up on them, but I wanted to pick them up again when I started back to school. I was worried about my eyes. They had always been better than perfect, but all the close reading was making them get blurry. I took a test. Slightly below normal in one eye, perfect in the other. No dice. No glasses for me. I think the second time around, it was more of badge, rather than a barrier, that I was looking for.

Glasses are a sign of imperfection. And I’ve never felt so imperfect as I did when I returned to school. Those who can’t do, teach, and all that. But you’re a natural born teacher, my friends would say. Yes, I suppose so. Naturally born second-rate. Naturally born imperfect. Except for my damn eyes. Why couldn’t they be as imperfect as I felt?

Now there are circles under my eyes. They get a little darker every year. If I only wore glasses, I could hide them. Too many late nights. Too much going on behind my eyes. Just too much. Sometimes I wish I didn’t see so much. It makes me easily distracted. It makes it hard to maintain relationships, when you change at such a rate that from one day to the next you’re a different person. If I had glasses, maybe I would be more comfortable with standing still. Maybe I could be comfortable with being damaged.

Walking back from my car today, I bent over to pick up a pair of glasses. They were tortoise-shell horn-rims for a woman, lying in the middle of a handicapped parking space. Nope, they didn’t suit me either. I dropped them off in the lost and found, but I wished they had been mine. I like glasses, but they just don’t seem to work for me.