Glasses vs. contacts, in a no-holds-barred cage match!

I decided to get contacts. After twenty years of glasses, in various shapes and clunky 80s styles, it seemed clear to me that it was finally time to get over my squeamishness regarding jabbing curved plastic bowls into my eyes.

My vision isn't terrible and it hasn't been all that bad since my first pair of spectacles. For example, I can ski pretty confidently without my glasses, but driving seems just a tad too risky (and illegal). I have no trouble getting through my day without glasses, but don't want to pay to see a movie without them, and so on.

The problem is my son. My son loves glasses and loves grabbing them, whether they are on my face or not, so as creeped out as I was by the idea of putting foreign objects in my eyes, it seemed less bothersome than cleaning toddler fingerprints off my glasses six to eight times per day.

How has it gone, so far? Well, I'm in that stage where my eye doctor and I are "evaluating," which is a fancy way of saying I'm forking over a copay every two weeks for a five minute session of "Did I tell you that you have an astigmatism? I did? Oh, okay."

This week hasn't gone very well. I've been waking up to goop and my right eye has been hurting for several days now. Both eyes have also been bloodshot for a month, making me look less "athletic and carefree" and more "trapped in a month long bender." I have another copay this afternoon, ummm... I mean, appointment, and I'm expecting to be told that I'm really not a good candidate for contacts after all, that'll be another $35 please.

I'm not one of those people that believes in fate. I've seen some mighty convenient coincidences in my lifetime, but it's hard to swallow the concept of some invisible force guiding me through my life. However, I do like to think that you can learn from coincidence, that although events in your life aren't preordained, you can still come away from them with a bit of wisdom. So, what did this experience teach me? What was my lesson? I have no idea. I think it has something to do with the fact that spending twenty minutes in the bathroom, swearing at what looks like a piece of round, expensive cellophane, really isn't for me. So, its back to the glasses, the pocket protector, and getting bullied for my lunch money.