Troubles of the bespectacled

Glasses are high-maintenance, perpetually smudged, pesky little tyrants. They slide down, fog up, attract fingerprints, and disappear at the exact moment they are needed. So, let’s talk about some consistent troubles of the bespectacled to further prove my point.

Maintenance

Glasses should not get as dirty as they do. Their only job is literally just to sit there on your face and look pretty. They are not out sweeping chimneys or crawling through tunnels. Still, after a while, they start to resemble the greasy screen of a toddler’s iPad.

After a thorough cleaning using a lint-free microfibre cloth, when you hold them up toward the light, you will discover a giant fingerprint right in the middle.

Fogging

During rainstorms, you must take off your glasses every three seconds and wipe them on increasingly damp fabric. Internally, you're hoping and praying that perhaps this time your sleeves will absorb the water instead of spreading it across the lenses in artistic streaks.

During the pandemic, when masks became mandatory, you had to choose between remaining alive and seeing. Entire communities emerged offering tips and tricks with the confidence of 19th-century doctors prescribing leeches. “Rub shaving cream on the lenses”, “fold a tissue inside the mask”, “wash the lenses with dish soap.” None of them worked, which you found out the hard way. You naively fell for their “hacks” and now have permanently smudged lenses to show for it.

Similarly, whether you are sobbing at a movie scene, having a hot meal, taking a shower, stepping out of an air-conditioned room, or entering a building in wintertime, you should be mentally prepared to handle temporary blindness.

Missing

If you take off your glasses, they will immediately vanish into thin air.

You place them on the same bedside table every night. Yet, upon waking, you find them missing and are forced to hunt them down. You scan your surroundings looking for a vague outline that resembles them, but as it turns out, that describes everything in your field of vision. So, you start squinting at furniture from two inches away and picking up random dark objects in desperation. Meanwhile, people without glasses are already having coffee and checking emails.

You’ll also find yourself searching for your glasses even while wearing them. You will spend a long time patting down tables, rummaging through pillows, peering under the bed, and accusing innocent family members of sabotage, only to realise they are perched on the top of your head.

In the way

The frames are always in your peripheral vision. They slide off when you lean over. They get tangled in scarves, hair, and earphones. If you remove a sweater too quickly, the glasses will fly across the room like a frightened pigeon.

Physical distress

By the end of the day, the pressure on the bridge of your nose and behind your ears leaves you with a short temper. You feel an incessant need to readjust them every few seconds to get some semblance of relief, but alas, none is to be had.

Changing your prescription also comes with a whole new world of trouble. An outdated one strains your eyes, but a new one makes the world tilt. The first few days, your depth perception is all out of whack, which makes navigating staircases particularly difficult.

Spoilsport

During group photos, the camera flash turns your eyes into glowing white orbs, ruining the overall aesthetic. Playing sports or exercising means flicking your glasses upward every thirty seconds instead of focusing on the game. Watching 3D movies means balancing a second pair of glasses on top of your own, which can trigger migraines.

Awkward scenes

Glasses have an uncanny ability to slide down your nose at the exact moment you are trying to appear composed. You will push them back up in what you think is a subtle manner, but it will actually resemble a nervous tic.

Nobody would ever walk up and remove somebody’s crutches mid-conversation. Yet, for some inane reason, people feel like it’s okay to grab glasses off other people’s faces. Then, they put them on and, after a few seconds, begin acting like they just entered the astral realm. Also, they always hand them back dirtier than before.

Expense

The frames and lenses themselves cost a lot. Numerous add-ons are available as well: anti-glare coating, anti-scratch coating, blue-light filtering, transition lenses, and so on. After spending all that money, they remain as fragile as ever. One sudden move and they are irrevocably bent, scratched, or broken. Meanwhile, people with good vision are just freeloading off genetics.

Prescription sunglasses cost even more, so you simply learn to spend your summers squinting in the sunlight.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can correctly identify blurry silhouettes in the dead of night and those who live with the legitimate fear that during a fire, they will escape carrying a tea tray, congratulating themselves on having rescued the laptop. Glasses may be troublesome at times, but they also allow us to see our families, read tiny instructions on medicine bottles, and distinguish between the cat and the furniture.