A Review of My First Pairs of Prescription Glasses

I have to think my vision is going to get a lot better.

I walked into the lobby of the office building, sweating after a walk I’d drastically undershot when planning my first morning commute to my new-ish job, looked to my right, made out a woman with dark hair, started strolling her way and shouted, “Mel!”

As I came closer she came into focus. First thing I noticed was she was shaking her head. Second was that she was absolutely not Mel, my new art partner who I’d only previously met during Zoom calls and who I wanted to make a good first in-real-life impression upon.

The woman pointed toward the other side of the lobby and shrugged, like maybe the person i was looking for was over there. She was correct.

“Oops. Sorry,” I said then did a quick bout face, now facing the woman who was, in fact, Mel.

We hugged a perspiration-heavy hello during which I accidentally knocked her hat off her head.

A great showing and first meeting all around, right there. Luckily, she graciously rolled with the punches.

I decided then I should probably go to an optometrist for the first time in more than three years.

The idea had been planted in my mind since a couple years before when I’d almost failed the eye test to get my driver’s license renewed, but then I neglected to do anything about it and just went on living my life. (I almost never drive.) I blamed COVID for my lapse in eye doctor visits, but it was more just errand fatigue (a real thing, kind of; look it up), general malaise and a tendency to not seek out help until I am absolutely certain I definitely need it. (I didn’t want to be the boy who cried myopic, and I wasn’t going to shell out a co-pay for them to tell me everything was fine, which is kind of out of character given that I’ll gladly pay certain doctors $1,000 cash if they can just tell me with some conviction that everything is going to be OK, whether they know it’s going to be or not.)

I could have found someone in Chicago, but, you know, the laziness, so instead I put it off until I came home to visit my family for Christmas. I wanted to go to my normal guy, but he’s close to retirement, only…