Framed
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Now that looks nice,” Jim Brady said as I tried on another pair of eyeglass frames.
“I like those,” he nodded.
I did too. But it was good to get a second opinion because I don’t trust my own judgment when it comes to fashion. There was, after all, that ugly eyewear incident when I was in fourth grade.
When it’s time for new glasses, I pester Jim Brady at Brady Optical.
I like Brady. He’s willing to watch me try on 30 frames. He doesn’t roll his eyes when I go back and forth a dozen times between two choices. He never says, “Scoot along, little miss.”
I entered his store the other day with a new prescription. And with dilated pupils.
Earlier that morning, to better see inside my eyes, Dr. Mike Reynolds put in eye drops that were a shocking yellow color (a shade that reminded me of the liquid Dramamine my mom forced me to swallow before long car trips.)
So anyway, while shopping for frames, my vision seemed to be a bit distorted as I looked through my light-fearing, dime-sized pupils.
The process of trying on glasses has an inherent flaw anyway: I need to be able to see how I look in the glasses, but the problem is – I can’t see. These sample frames have no corrective lenses; I have to lean in close to the mirror.
Brady was there to save me from myself. Clasping three or four sets of frames, I’d try one on and look at him.
“Does this one look better… or these?” I said, switching frames. “This pair… or this one?”
“No, that one doesn’t work at all for you,” he’d occasionally say.
Boy, I sure could have used his advice when I was 10-years-old and selecting my first pair of frames.
No one else in my fourth grade class had glasses. I was certain to be a four-eyed freak.
But I bravely picked out a pair of brown plastic frames in something of a cat-eye shape. I thought they looked snazzy. This might not be so bad after all, I thought to myself.
When I picked up those glasses, oh my, they looked frightful on me. Absolutely, for the rest of my life, I would be a freak.
The next day, while walking to school, I came upon Craig Smith, a cute boy in my class.
“You look weird,” Craig said.
Now, of course, as an adult, I realize that weird might just have meant interesting, different. To make a long story short, I didn’t wear these glasses except to read the blackboard. Over the next two years, I gradually retired them and reverted totally to squinting.
When I was in sixth grade, my mother took college night classes and she and my teacher were in the same class. Mrs. Latas suggested to Mom that I might need glasses because I had difficulty seeing the blackboard.
“Cheryl HAS glasses,” Mom told Mrs. Latas.
Busted.
My next pair of glasses were silver, wire-rims. In the age of granny glasses, I was groovy at last. I enjoyed wearing those.
At 15, I probably pledged to wash dishes for a year because somehow I talked Mom into letting me get contact lenses. I wore contacts for three decades.
Several years ago, I began to have trouble reading. I could still sound out big words and everything, the problem was in seeing those words; they just wouldn’t come into focus.
So, I opted for glasses, bifocals. That’s when I walked into Brady Optical for the first time.
The other day, Jim Brady and I chose a pair that we both thought looked nice: rectangular-shaped, brown plastic frames with a hint of blue.
I like the new glasses. I don’t look weird. Oh yeah, and I can see better, too.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
• Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.