--"Telescope Eyes (old lyrics)", Eisley
"What are these for?" I asked, holding up the oversize black eyeglass frames.
It was my first time seeing Toby's room and of all the interesting things to catch my eye that'd been one of the first. I tend to keep the places I live very spartan in terms of decor--a few books here, my one Monet print, and various bits of paper strewn about. However, the first thing I noticed about her humble abode was the outpouring of colors and collection of eye-catching objects spread throughout it. I glanced around for a few seconds, taking it all in, but when my eyes finally did focus in they focused in on the odd-shaped glasses with no lenses in them.
"Those were a gift from one of my teachers," she said, taking them from me. Placing them on her delicate face, she did her best to make her face seem profound. "How do they look on me?"
"Your teacher gave you a pair of useless glasses?"
"Gosh. They're not useless. I've been told by my parents they're very sharp," she laughed, once more taking the glasses off and placing them on her desk.
I shrugged my shoulders and continued to look around the room.
I've always had an involved history with the wearing of glasses. When I was at St. Rita's, there were only three people in my class of thirty that wore glasses. Two of them were my friends and one of them was a girl named Rachel (not my Rachel, but a Rachel). I didn't think anything much of it at the time, but it definitely set them apart as being against the norm. I never made fun of them for how it altered their appearance. Somewhere along the way, though, I must've subconsciously taken note that glasses were something that set you apart for whatever reason and didn't necessarily ease the process of fitting in.
At the time I was very keen on fitting in, being one of the only minorities in an otherwise homogenous group of caucasian students. I already knew my personality was kind of out there, being long ago labeled the weird guy of our class and embracing the label with a decent amount of modesty. I sure as hell didn't want to add to that reputation by wearing something that would've marked me as being entirely different from the herd. I already felt alienated half of the time I went to school. There was no need to put this emotion into effigy with a set of glasses. I didn't make that a credo at the time. I just adopted that mentality somewhere along the way.
"No, I don't think the glasses look bad," I said halfheartedly. "I've just never met anyone who willingly wore glasses when there was no reason for them to. I've just never met anyone who had cosmetic glasses."
"I think glasses are fun, mojo. This pair certainly is. I feel more renowned and famous just by having them on, I can tell you that much," she said, trailing me around while I poked into more and more of her belongings.
Right then my own glasses began to weigh heavily on my face. Most of the time the fact I wear glasses when I'm anywhere but home doesn't register with me. They kind of fade into the background of pressing thoughts after awhile. After all, I need them when I'm driving which, as a Southern California native, I'm doing about 25% of my day anyway. I need them when I'm sitting in front of a computer for too long, which I tend to do a lot. You could say that half of my day requires the use of glasses in one form or another. Yet it always manages to surprise me when I'm in the middle of work and I catch something out of the corner of my eye, only to see the edge of my frames peeking into view. My brain startles as if to ask "how did those get there?"
"I don't think they're that much fun."
"You don't like your glasses?"
"Not hardly."
"Why?"
"I've got no real reason to like them. Honestly, if I had my eye, I wouldn't wear them if I didn't need to. In fact," I said. I proceeded to take my glasses off. I placed them atop her dresser very carefully. I then turned around to face her. "There's no real reason for me to wear them here either."
"Gosh, it makes you look so different. It's like removing the headlights from a car," she laughed.
"In what way?"
"You know, they're small most of the time. But if you take them off, you notice right away that they're missing. That's my view of it anyway."
"So my glasses are headlights, huh?"
"No,
my glasses are headlights," she replied.
I never wore glasses all through my time at St. Rita's and most of my time at La Salle. My eyesight was good, if not great, during this time period. Every eye check-up I had said that I had nothing wrong with my vision and didn't need glasses. It was great for me because it was one less thing I was required to keep track of and it was one last thing that I had to fret self-consciously about.
There was a brief period in high school where my eye doctor told me I could wear glasses to rectify a small problem in my left eye. Yet it was basically like wearing a piece of transparent glass--I think it was only 5 off of 20/20 vision in whatever direction was necessary. Eventually trying it out for a month or so made me feel like a spectacle so I stopped wearing them. At the time I thought that would be the last time I would be compelled to wearing them. I don't know why. Maybe I just had the idea that my body would continue to function as it had for the previous sixteen or so years. Or maybe I just had the typical notion that I was invincible as so many teenagers often do.
It wasn't until 2004, in fact, that I started wearing them full-time. I started to notice my vision getting blurry while I was working at Bally's. Sitting in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day as I had been for the previous four years had finally caught up with me. I was told that if I was going to continue to do so I would need glasses.
I was crushed. I hated the thought of wearing glasses. Now I would need to be wearing them in public for most if not all of my day.
I sat down at Toby's desk after I had looked around for a bit. At the desk I started to play around with the glasses. Toby sat at the edge of her bad looking at me with a careful glance. She has this way about her that lends the idea that she has about half-a-dozen ideas going on in her mind at the same time. It's this mentality that I think gives her such a considerate amount of perception about other people and about herself. Glasses or not, she's one of the few people I've met who can see right into the heart of a person and take what she wants out of the results. She's not an analyst like Epcot is, but she can be very empathic when she needs to be.
The other thing I've always like about her is the fact that she knows what it's like to be on the outside looking in. I usually was placed in that position by circumstances, but not her. Toby's always maintained her distance as a conscious choice, as a decision to set herself apart from everyone else. I'm just weird even at the best times. Like most true visionaries or artists Toby likes to think of herself as a breed apart from the masses. Yet we always meet in the middle as a couple of people who understand gravely what it's like to be going at this whole life thing without much support. We've always held it in our hearts, that for the most part, we go through our days very much alone. It's nice hearing somebody else come up with the same truths about being independently-minded that I've always held as tenets of my existence.
After awhile I got tired of her just staring at me without saying anything.
"What? What is it?"
"I was thinking that as soon as you stepped off the plane at the airport I've only seen you in your glasses. That's the only way I've known you."
"So?"
"So you're sitting over there still thinking about how weird it is to be wearing glasses. Meanwhile, all I can think about is how different it is to see you without them. And this is only after being around you for a day now. That's what I think the great thinkers liked to call a 'schism of perception.'"
"Schism of perception?"
"Sure. For you, you went, what, thirty years without wearing anything on your face. So the four years you've been wearing glasses is the exception to you."
"And?"
"And I've only known you for three years and every picture you've sent me of you has you with your glasses on. My reality up until today was the idea that you've always worn them. Gosh. It surprises me is all how different things are based on the limited information we're presented with. That's all I'm trying to say."
I'm just like you
I know you knowI saw her point. I'd only known her for three years, but they all had fallen into my glasses-wearing period. To her, that was the reality of my situation. Anything that came before that--if I had once had purple hands or an extra ear once upon that--would always be the exception to her. My existence as it was when first we met would always be the benchmark upon which she would base any and all of her perceptions of me. On the other hand, people like Breanne (and myself, I guess) who had known me before I had started to wear glasses would always use that as the basis of their analysis. In the scope of things, because I had gone through my formative years without the aid of glasses, I will forever think my natural state is not wearing them. I will forever think that I look weird in them and that it makes me look dorky, geeky, or whatever else you will (Come to think of it, Breanne's position about my glasses has been that she likes me in them, but that's only because she has an unspoken fetish for guys in glasses. LOL).
I can't say that I've hated my time in glasses. Especially with my most recent pair, I've grown comfortable wearing them. For the most part I've accepted the idea that they are a part of my existence now. However, subconsciously I believe that from the very first day I started wearing them daily I was no longer the same person I once was. It's like I lived in a group of perfectly sighted people and then was excommunicated to glass and contact wearers. And I've never really felt completely like me from that point on.
It's why to this day it could of annoys me on a basic level to see people I used to know as not wearing glasses suddenly sporting them now. It only serves to remind me of how I was tossed out from that happy home, never to come back again. Yes, it is only a matter of perception, but how we see ourselves is deeply rooted on the image of us as a little kid. In some respects, on the outside we may look all grown up and worn-out, but inside we still see ourselves as that nine or ten-year-old best self that we remember as being the funnest, brightest, and blissful time of our life. For me at least that was a kid that didn't wear glasses. By putting on my glasses, it reaffirms the fact that I'm not that kid any more. I'll never be that happy again. I'll never have that much fun again.
I took off my glasses. I then picked up Toby's obnoxious pair and put them on. Seeing through the non-existent glass took a little getting used to. I adjusted shortly, though, and turned towards my contemplative companion.
"Better? I'm not freaking you out any more?" I smiled.
"Gosh. That's much better. If you want you can keep that pair for as long as you like. I'll let you," she smiled back.
At that time I only put them on as a joke. They were large and garish, making me feel especially aware that I had a heavy pair of glasses on. Yet that's the normal way I feel whenever I first put any pair of glasses on--that I'm ridiculous and that I'm not a person who really wears glasses.
But in reality I think I'm just balking at the fact that my body's gone through a lot of changes in much the same manner as my brain has. I'm not the same non-glasses wearing kid I used to be. I have different priorities than that person. I have different ideas about the world. I don't even have the same hopes of fitting in like I used to be. It would be nice to think I retained a lot of that boy in me because it would mean that I had a lot of my priorities figured out at an exceptionally young age. That wouldn't be the truth, however.
The truth is the picture Toby sees is closer to the picture of me that is "real." I'm more of the thirty-four-year old glasses-wearing romantic idealist than the plain ten-year-old idealist.
I spun around in Toby's chair while I gave the glasses a test spin as well. When I stopped, she still had that look on her face that she had finally figured something out about me. She got off her bed, silently stepped over to me, and took my hand in hers.
"Can I tell you something, mojo?"
"Shoot."
"I kind of like you better in your glasses. Gosh. Even before I knew what you looked like I always figured you as someone who wore them. And now that I've seen you in them it's hard to picture you not wearing them, I can tell you that much. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Trust me."
I took off her grandma glasses and put mine on. She took back her glasses and put them on as well.
"There, now we look like ourselves," she said simply.
And she was right.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Eisley, embarrassment, glasses, perception, ridicule, Toby
