Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 06, 2022

But wait until it snows and you can see all the individual flakes.

Even worse, the only leaves you get to see now are in your textbooks.

When I get a new pair of glasses my first response is “Wow, I really need a manicure”.

The street lights look small and too bright…

I wasn’t nearsighted…I had astigmatism, so my initial reaction was “straight lines are curved, and my feet are out in front of me.”

I got my glasses shortly after getting to 1st grade. We were lined up in columns of rows in the class and I ended up at the back. Our teacher would stand in front of the blackboard (yeah, black) and wave her hands and all the other kids were learning to print, but all I could see was waving hands. Then they took us all for an eye check, and very shortly after that, I was moved to the front row. It was a miracle! She was actually making white lines while waving her hands! And not too long after that I got glasses. The kind with hooks behind my ears in a (nearly futile) attempt to keep them on. Within a couple of years, I was absolutely addicted to seeing with glasses. Seventy years later, I still am! Though I no longer have hooks behind my ears.

Mine was in HS. The school had bought them for me and the school nurse brought them to me while I was sitting at a library table. I put them on an looked at the classmate across from me and exclaimed, “You have freckles!”

I am very nearsighted, as well as a bad astigmatism. I got my first pair of glasses when I was about eight years old. I was astonished to see the writing on the blackboard for the first time. These days when I get new glasses, I’m pleasantly surprised to be able to see the individual leaves at the tops of trees.

This must be universal. When I left the ophthalmologist at age 18, I remember clearly that trees had leaves and I might have done better in school if I could have seen the blackboard.

Needed glasses for distance vision at 10 years old. Got Lasik surgery at 35 and was so glad to kick the glasses and contacts, but they warned me that I would still need reading glasses when I got older. My close up vision was always good and I thought, “nonsense”. Sure enough, about 10 years ago I realized I could no longer focus while reading. I have several pairs of various strength store-type reading glasses lying around. Without them, anything up close is a blur.

I had cataract surgery a few years ago. It was always a surprise to look at a mirror and wonder who the hell is that.

I wasn’t terribly nearsighted. I could see leaves and knew there was writing on the chalkboard, even if it wasn’t sharp. But seeing blades of grass after I got my glasses was amazing.

I grew up in the city. My first glasses experience (age 7) was “there are little rocks in the sidewalks!” I pretty much repeated that epiphany every year.

3rd grade: I can see the leaves! AND bricks in the house across the street!

Growing vision problems catch the eye early on. Increasing deafness gets put off until somebody dear to one says, ‘Either get hearing aids or an ear trumpet, but DO SOMETHING!! I’m tired of repeating myself!" That usually works.

I was in my 40s and we had lockers over our desks. The company asked for each of us to provide them with the S/N of the lock. I went to look and it was a blur. I had sort of noticed reading getting a bit harder, but this was the first time I could not see something totally. I had to get the guy next to me to read it off and then make an eye appointment.

My brother got glasses when, while we were on a road trip, my dad asked him, “What does that sign say?” He replied, “What sign?” I suppose I got checked at the same time; what I remember was coming out of the optician’s office and, like everybody else here, being amazed at seeing individual leaves on trees.

I got mine when I was fifteen, necessary to pass the divers’ test in the state I grew up in. Have worn them ever since. Never considered contacts. The last eye exam I had, the Doc told me that I could drive w/o glasses in my current state of residence. But I’ve gotten so used to them that I won’t.

You’ll also need to carefully clean them. Constantly. Unless you like that dreamy quality.

These were my exact words at 10 when I stepped out of the optometrist office.

I guess I’m lucky, being only mildly nearsighted in my mid-40s. My glasses sit in my car for if I need them while night driving.

I had that reaction too! It didn’t happen until grad school though. I should have been tipped off, I suppose, but I just thought the state I moved to had really bad street signs (until I got my glasses).

I was shocked to learn that other people could see clearly. I thought everyone saw things just like I did, blurry…10 years old.

I also noticed that I could see a person yards away give me a smile. Up until then I’d been unintentionally snubbing a lot of people.

Exactly what happened with me.

I was hugely near-sighted. This comic perfectly describes my reaction upon getting glasses for the first time. MY myopia was so bad that lasik surgery could not totally correct it. But at least I no longer need my glasses to find my glasses LOL.

My parents first figured out I needed glasses when we visiting D.C. and wanted me to read a small sign describing a tree in the park. I couldn’t read it. It took them a moment to figure out that I said that not because I didn’t know the words, I couldn’t see the words.

Now in my older age and after eye surgeries both eyes see differently. Odd but at least I CAN see.

raking the bottom with this one

When I had my eye lenses replaced due to cataracts, they gave me a lot of options for what I’d prefer their default focal length to be. One of them was even having one eye set to reading distance and the other one set to remote, for driving. This of course would’ve meant that I’d need to keep switching back and forth between two different pairs of glasses, one with the correction on the left and the other with the correction on the right. I settled on having both eyes set the same, to 40 centimetres, the typical distance between my eyes and the computer screen that I look at about 10 hours a day, sans glasses!

My reaction was more like, “Hey, more 3D!”

I remember thinking that Monet must have been nearsighted when I got my first glasses.

5th grade: “Why are they writing so small on the board?” Down to the nurse’s office and then to an optometrist. Wow, trees have leaves and there are blades of grass! Eyes got progressively worse every year until I got contacts. Now they have stabilized on the deep end of negative numbers. Cataract surgery will take care of that but that is a few years off.

I was 5 when I got glasses. The teachers noticed I I had made mistakes on questions posed in the front of the room. I remember one situation in particular when I when I mistook the colors in a question. I had no idea people could see them that far away and I just assumed they were guessing, so I guessed too.

Mmm, our trees still have leaves.

I am glad she got the Specks that she needed.