Framed

November 12, 2009 | My Jottings

Recently I realized that it has been two and a half years since I’ve had my eyes checked. That’s too long if one is legally blind in one’s right eye and one is over fifty. Besides, my old glasses were looking pretty outdated and I thought it was time for a frame change along with a new prescription. My old specs were wire-rimmed and they sort of added to the whole grandma look that I seem to be headed toward, no matter how hard I dig in my heels.

Aren’t there so many unique frames to choose from these days? I like the smallish rectangular frames with the wider earpieces that often have designs on them, like these. I tried some of those on but then my peripheral vision was obstructed, and when one is legally blind in one eye, one doesn’t usually opt for eye-wear that obstructs what precious little vision one has. It’s sort of an optical rule of thumb.

So anyway, I decided to try something different. No wire-rims for me. I thought I’d go with something more trendy, something that doesn’t blend into my pale face quite so much.

I have a friend who wears some very cool retro cat-eye frames that resemble the ones I wore when I was a little girl, but they didn’t look right on me. (Just as they didn’t look right on me then – and my parents wondered why they had to nag me to wear my glasses.)

I tried on at least twenty frames and most of them looked pretty bad. After thinking that I might have to stick with wire-rims after all, I finally found two that were acceptable, but neither one was an aha sort of frame, as in “Aha! These are darling! I think I’ll take these! Wearing glasses every waking minute isn’t so bad after all!”  The two I chose were just okay, and I ended up opting for the darker ones.

So here are my new glasses. How would you describe them?

A little severe looking? Clinical, perhaps? Or studious. Definitely a tad on the geeky side, which is fine with me. Harriet the Spy also comes to mind.

Hopefully I’m set in the eyewear department until early 2012.