Seeing is believing...

I just got back from the miracle workers’… I can see again! Hallelujah!! Oh I had my old glasses to wear in the meantime but I haven’t actually seen a face in over a week. Everything else…but faces, for some reason, were out of my sightful realm. So right now my optician is my super heroine.

You see…

I sat on my eyeglasses last week. Yes folks, I plonked that big ole arse of mine right down atop my spectacles…the “specs” I totally need in order to see anything, the ones I had earlier placed on that hard wooden surface, before I sat down on it to put on my shoes and socks. Crunch…

They were (are) nice eyeglasses and certainly the most face-friendly glasses I’ve ever donned in the name of sight. Because the frame (such as it is) is titanium, they weigh next to nothing and they aren’t constantly slipping down the bridge of my nose or leaving unsightly indentations. They’re light, thin and beautiful.

The side pieces are integral parts of the lenses and so is the center piece. They’re called Silhouette Titan progressive lensed eyeglasses and they go from zero distance to infiinity. I have astigmatism and like so many millions of people, am presbyopic. If I didn’t wear the progressive lenses I’d probably be saddled with big honking tri-focals.

The lenses are Crizal Alize lenses and they are anti-reflective, allowing as much as 99% of light to enter my eyes. That means that other people can also see my eyes (in all their bloodshot glory) without that glassy glare to get in the way. The scratch resistant coating is fused into the lens for diamond-hard protection and these babies have a hydophobic property and they even resist smudges and dirt. They clean better than any eyeglasses I’ve ever had. I really love them. Can you tell? I’ve gotten old enough to start taking my eyesight seriously.

The Silhouette Titan eyeglass model I have also has an extra polarized sunglass lens which fits right onto the center piece and becomes an integral part of the eyeglasses, easy to snap on and unsnap. I think that’s pretty cool. I didn’t have sunglasses before. Too much of a pain to switch back and forth, besides being a double expense.

Don’t get me wrong…these eyeglasses aren’t inexpensive. Dear Husband almost had a coronary when the price was quoted. All glasses are expensive these days, and specially coated high index polycarbonate lenses with titanium “frames” are worse. But they have a warranty, thank goodness. I think they should have included “a compass in the stock.”

The specs didn’t break but their architecture was grossly altered and at the angle they ended up at, they were almost unwearable. Boo hoo! I carefully wended my way over to the clinic and embarrassedly relayed my tale of woe. To their credit, no one laughed (at least while I was there) and for that I am grateful.

I had taken a book with me to read while I waited for the alterations to take place. I never go anywhere at any time that I don’t have a book with me in case I might have a minute of free time to sop up some edumacation…but…I had overlooked the fact that they would have my eyeglasses and I cannot see anything without my glasses on so there I sat, book in hand, impotently staring off into unintelligible space while the optician tried to perform the miracle of restoring a workable shape to the mangled mess I handed her.

Well, you know how life can be sometimes… It wasn’t long before the optician stood before my blank stare and said that now the embarrassment was hers. While trying, ever so gently, to restore order to my precious spectacles, the corner of the lens was inadvertantly overstressed and broken and now a new lens would have to be ordered and it would take a few days (even with a special rush order put on it) before we would have the replacement lens in hand. Sigh… The good news was that the glasses were still under warranty. Oh goody. I rarely get such positive news about anything anymore.

I got the call earlier and hastened my way over to have my miracle performed and so now, here I am, sitting at my ergonomic keyboard pouring forth words of extreme gratitude for the totally wonderful work of a totally wonderful optician, whose face I actually got to see before leaving the building. Hallelujah brothers and sisters, I can see! I can see…and I will never, ever sit on my eyeglasses again. I will treat these little marvels of precision engineering with the utmost respect they deserve…forevermore. Gosh you all look good to me right now. That is you, isn’t it?