So you know that thing where I haven’t been able to see properly for years?  Turns out I needed glasses.  Go figure.

I came out of my first optometrist appointment in 11 years with giant pupils, a headache, and a receipt for $570 worth of tests and glasses.  I was forced to wear disposable sunglasses home because my pupils were the size of dimes and I hadn’t brought anything of my own to wear.  My vanity and I were less than thrilled.  But then I decided to pretend I was Kanye West.  You see, the disposable sunglasses looked not unlike something that Kanye would put on his face and then millions of teenagers would run out and buy.  Both the glasses I had to wear and the ones he chooses to wear are ridiculous, but I figured hey, if he can make wearing venetian blinds look cool to teenagers, why couldn’t I do the same with sunglasses that unroll out of a little cardboard tube?   So you know what I did?  I rocked the hell out of those glasses.  I strutted my way down the sidewalk.  I flashed a smile to the group of attractive men and women standing in front of a restaurant.  I held my head up high when passing the two men standing in the Ferrari dealership parking lot.  It was broad daylight and I looked like a damn fool, but that wasn’t going to stop me.  My inner Kanye told me I looked fabulous.

Three days later, I picked up my new glasses.  I always knew that I should be able to see more than I did, but I had no idea how far the human eye was actually supposed to see.  Apparently it’s pretty fucking far.  I could not believe how clear everything was when I first put them on.  My eyesight has always been incredible up close.  I can see details in things that many people can’t.  This has proved very useful in my professional life, although the people whose artwork I’m scrutinizing don’t seem as fond of this ability as I am.  Now ask me to read what a sign across the street says and I have to decipher the Monet-like mess in front of me.  I had gotten quite good at figuring out what something was, but lately it had been getting harder and harder, and my frustration at not being able to tell if the man ten metres in front of me was cute had started to take it’s toll.

As evidenced by the fact that I have avoided being hit by a bus and don’t often walk into walls, I didn’t need a strong prescription.  I don’t have to wear the glasses all the time, but they are there when I need them.  And now, when I want to be a sexy librarian, I just put on the glasses and BAM!  The hotness I exude is almost too much to handle. 

I have always been easily distracted, but being able to see has increased that problem ten fold.  I’ll be in the middle of a conversation and then I’ll notice something a block away and I’ll be so amazed that I can see it clearly that I’ll forget I was talking and just stare.  And then I’ll remember that I was in the middle of a sentence but won’t remember what I was talking about.  Within the first twenty minutes of having glasses, I ran into a friend I hadn’t heard from in a couple of months.  Thirty seconds into the conversation I had to take the glasses off because I couldn’t concentrate.  My senses were so overloaded that I started to get panicky.  That night, after I conquered the panicked feeling, I wandered around telling Kit Fishto, a cat and my friend’s television to “look at my face!”  My shiny new glasses and my ability to see seemed like things I should share with the inanimate objects and pets in my life. 

As a way to celebrate my new found sight, my friend and I watched tv.  And for the first time since she bought the television, I could actually read the channel guide.  So I read it out loud.  A little while later, I glanced out the window and started staring at the apartment building a couple of blocks away that was lit up in the night.  I took off my glasses.  I put them back on.  I took them off.  I put them back on.  I turned to my friend and said “Oh my god, I can see the things in the windows of that apartment building.”  And then I started to cry.  My friend laughed, but it was the loving kind of laughter.  And she got it.  She knew why I was crying.  It was funny and touching and she knew what being able to see the flowers sitting on that dining table two blocks away meant to me.

I can’t wait to see all the things I’ve been missing.