For the longest time I had perfect eyesight—for more than 40 years, in fact, it was better than perfect. Throughout my life my vision has been regularly clocked at 20/15. So where “perfect” 20/20 vision means that a person can see what a person with normal eyesight should be able to see at 20 feet, a person with normal eyesight would need to be 15 feet away from something to see what I could see at 20 feet away.
I was basically a superhero. Anytime I would go get my driver’s license renewed, I’d wow the DMV vision-testing employee, who otherwise looked as though they wanted to end their life. “Give me the smallest letters you’ve got,” I’d say. “I can handle it. And go ahead and put the B by the E and the F by the P. It makes no difference to me.”
The advantages here are obvious. All things being equal, if the thing an everyday, average, ordinary 20/20 person and I were needing to see clearly from 20 feet were a grizzly bear, or a person wielding a knife while making stabbing motions with a crazed look in his eye, an extraordinary person with vision like mine would have a five foot head start in fleeing for safety, which I would need because I am a poor runner. Thankfully, I also have above average elbows, and so if this person with 20/20 vision did catch up with me, I would simply pop them in the kidney as they tried to pass, leaving them for bear meat/stabbing.
But sometime around age 40, my vision became simply a perfect 20/20. I was, like so many superheroes before me, losing my powers, my kryptonite being time and decreasing cellular division. Then several years ago I was winking or something, and with one eye closed I noticed a sign in the distance that looked blurry. I went to the eye doc, who told me that one eye had slipped to 20/40. No need for glasses yet, he said, but in a year or two I might want to consider it.
I’d actually already considered it. For a long time I had wanted glasses. In my late 20s, I even briefly wore glasses with clear lenses because I thought they made me look better. In retrospect I think this was because I started balding at about age 18, and so by my late 20s I was self-conscious about it and looking for something to distract people from noticing my head. But the reason also could have been that my self-loathing runs so deep and is so thoroughly ingrained in my consciousness that even when I had a better-than-perfect human trait like 20/15 vision, my inner voice suggested that I should despise myself and make a change. “Get clear glasses and maybe you won’t be such a complete failure,” I would say to me. I think it was probably the balding thing though.
A couple months ago I finally returned to the eye doc. This time he told me that one eye had officially gone farsighted, while the other went nearsighted, with the end result being that my vision, with both eyes working together, was still basically pretty good. But it was enough of an excuse to get a prescription for glasses.
Last weekend I went shopping at Warby Parker. I brought along my friend Sara, who has a pretty good sense of style. I tried on dozens of pairs, hoping like hell that I wouldn’t get pinkeye or something. But unlike when I was in my 20s, I now found myself thinking that no matter what pair I put on, I looked better without them.
Finally I found a pair that I liked, and Sara found a pair that she liked on me, but they were different pairs, and the pair that she liked, I didn’t like. And so what I did was get the ones Sara liked, using the logic that many of the decisions that have led me to where I am now in life were made by me. It was time to let someone else make my decisions. The glasses will arrive in two weeks.
I’m not sure yet if I’ll wear them. Maybe I’ll get a wig instead.
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