It all started when I was in second or third grade. Before going to bed every night, my parents and I would read together, usually a chapter or two from a book I couldn't yet manage on my own (the Chronicles of Narnia stand out most in my memory). Maybe I knew that I was bound to be near sighted since both of my parents were, or maybe I'd seen some I admired on TV who was wearing glasses, but whatever the inspiration, I had the sudden desire to wear glasses. One night I starting squinting and pulling the book closer to my face, trying to show my parents that my eyesight was failing and that I needed glasses. I must not have been very convincing because nothing came of it, and after two weeks of trying, I abandoned the act.

My First Pair of Glasses

Several years later, my eyesight really did start to decline, but now I was significantly less keen on wearing glasses than I had previously been. Instead of making a show of needing to get my eyes checked, I did all that I could to hide the fact. I succeeded in hiding it for so long, in fact, that when I finally put on my new glasses for the first time, I was stunned. I had never seen (or noticed) such detail or definition. There were individual leaves on the tree just outside the door and the sign on the other side of the street actually had words written on it. I didn't know that a person's vision could be this good.

It didn't take too long, however, before I realized how much more nerdy my glasses made me look than I already was. The huge, bright-blue wire rims, though thin, were much too big for my small face. Worse still, they didn't like to stay on my nose and were constantly slipping down. By consequence, I developed the subconscious habit of crinkling my nose in an attempt to handlessly push the glasses back up to where they belonged, a habit which inspired a new nickname of "Rabbit." For the next three years, contact lenses topped my Christmas list.

The Great Change

I don't know whether it was my parents' concern that I would neglect my contact lens care or their unwillingness to shell out the big bucks that kept them from allowing me to get contact lenses. It wasn't until I started playing lacrosse my freshman year of high school that I was finally able to convince them that getting contacts was not only a good idea but a necessity. I was lacking enough in athletic ability as it was, that practicing without my glasses was just a bad idea altogether. And when I got hit in the face with one too many balls--it was only one, but still one too many--the decision was final.

Contacts. Finally. What a dream. Had I been a little more daring, I might have gone for something crazy like special effect lenses, wild eyes, or even just colored lenses. But as it was, I was too elated to be shedding the horrid glasses to care about whether my eyes were green, brown, electric blue, or feline