Erwaman's Personal Journal - January 2009

Midway through the fall semester, I went to Costco to get new glasses. I needed stronger prescriptions. I had noticed, sometimes even when sitting in the first row, I still couldn't read everything the teacher wrote on the board. Outside, walking down the sidewalk, I'd look straight at a person approaching me about 20 meters away, but all I'd see would be a blurry face, no details yet. But most people have good vision or proper prescriptions, so sometimes if the other person recognized me, she'd wave and call out, "Hi, Anthony!" I had some awkward situations like this when I'd have a pretty good idea who the person was from the figure and the voice, but I'd wait until I was closer to make sure before returning the greeting. Sometimes, I'd be staring absentmindedly at a figure in the distance and I'm practically passing that person before I realize it's somebody I know. The other person might think I don't like her or something. Or I'm in an unsocial mood. Usually it's just my poor vision.

When my eyes were better, I’d just have one pair of glasses. And for things I didn’t need them for, I wouldn’t wear glasses. But then my eyes got worse and I could basically only read without glasses. At that point, it would have been a good idea to have two pairs of glasses, a strong prescription and a weak one – the strong one for the classroom and watching TV and the weak one for the computer, eating, socializing, times when eyesight is not crucial.

Somehow, I would always lose or break my weaker pair. So quickly, I’d be down to one pair of glasses. Which is not good, because then I'd have no back up.

I had only one pair when I started the cross country season senior year. One day, we decided to do the 10-mile loop, which passes my house. I decided to just run home and cut the loop short (by a lot). Before we left WP, I was doing the mindless glasses-adjust and randomly the right arm of my glasses fractures and my glasses fall off my face. It wasn’t just a screw that came out; the arm had severed into two pieces at the joint. Well, fortunately, you just need to see big objects when running, which is pretty easy even without glasses, so I ran with the team to my house without incident.

I didn’t have any other pairs of glasses, so I taped together my glasses and kept wearing them. I thought about Harry Potter taping his glasses, though he did it inbetween the two lenses. While the tape on Potter’s glasses was very obvious (beige tape on a black frame on the front of the glasses), few people noticed the tape on my glasses (clear masking tape on a black frame that was turning white from the sweat and elements crust on the side of the glasses).

Well, I soon got a new pair of glasses, but I couldn’t exactly carry my old pair around because I couldn’t fold it up. In order to fold it, I would have to remove the tape and break the arm off again. So I ended up mostly wearing just the new pair of glasses, which I still have now.

This summer, I played a lot of Minesweeper, trying to get on the Authoritative Minesweeper country rankings list for “USA – NJ,” which I finally did, but focusing on tiny squares and numbers for so long probably hurt my eyesight.

I also saw The Dark Knight in the theaters, and there was a scene where the Joker sent the police chief a text message. It’s being shown on this HUGE movie screen, and I can’t read it. I had to turn to Andy next to me to ask him what the text message said.

So now, after getting my new glasses about one and a half months ago, I have two pairs of different strength glasses that are both in good condition (foldable, no tape on them, etc.).

I’m usually wearing my old (weaker) pair because I’m on the computer a lot, and the screen is up close. Sometimes I end up driving while wearing my old pair, and it’s fine; your car is big, stuff on the road is big, I can see big objects. Maybe I can’t read every street sign, but that's not gonna kill you.

My newest prescription is -500/-525 (right/left), but I still have the lowest prescription in my family. But I think my eyes are still getting worse.

I wonder if switching around too much between my two pairs of glasses and no glasses could be more detrimental than just sticking to my strongest pair. Is all the focus adjusting between glasses bad for my eyes? I wear my new glasses when watching TV and during class, I read without glasses, and I do pretty much everything else with my old glasses.

On a side note, sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone when they’re staring intently right at you. Well, with poor vision, you just see a blurry face and you can’t tell where a person’s eyes are focused, so you worry less about the expression on the person’s face and you focus more on what you’re saying. I wonder if that’s what some teachers are doing when they lecture without glasses and only put them on when they need to read something.

I am back in NJ this weekend getting my tuxedo lengthened, so I read the comics this morning. And today, for the first time, I found the six differences in the same order as the answers are listed, a 1/6! = 1/720 chance. I only read this comic once per week, and I’ve definitely read it less than 720 times (this would be one comic per week for nearly 14 years), so right now I’m beating the odds of finding the differences in the order listed.

I remember another time when I found SEVEN differences. One of the differences was questionable, but it was listed in the answers. The difference not listed was very distinct and definitely a difference. I wish I had wrote to Slylock Fox about it.