A Little Extra Help For You Four Eyes – An Editorial

Well I had to do it. I’ve gone my entire life without it but I just had to do it. I needed it. I just had to have it, I couldn’t take the abstinence any longer.

I got glasses.

What’d you think I meant? I ate meat for the first time? Get out of my room and leave me alone.

Oh, right, there’s more to be said. So since glasses are going to be a part, albeit slight, of my life, I naturally chose with great care the establishment where I would procure these new seeing mirrors and settled on the Buckingham Palace, nay, the Taj Mahal of vision care, the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Now the thing that struck me about this experience was not the fuzzy charts, the close breathing of the optometrist, or the fact that I tried on women’s frames for about five minutes before I realized what I was doing (though I did look strangely pretty).

No the thing that got me was the accessories a visitor to the vision center can purchase. These are more than the frames, shades, straps, nose pads, lens cleaner, or any of the 70 things directly to do with glasses.

Telescopes. Big stacks of telescopes, and microscopes were placed around the room, I guess just in case they had a patient that was beyond help by normal lenses.

“Well we tried inch-thick lenses and they still don’t work for you Elbert, why don’t you just take a couple of these telescopes home with you.”

Isn’t that the insult you hear in middle school/yesterday? “Hey telescope eyes how many fingers am I holding up? Why are you wearing those old clothes? Why doesn’t your dad work harder so you won’t be poor?” I didn’t like middle school. Or yesterday.

Putting these various ‘scopes in there seems to me to be an indirect, somewhat clever jab at we, the seeing impaired, similar to naming the process of getting a nose job Rhinoplasty, as Jerry Seinfeld has mentioned before.

Clearly we all realize there is a problem, that’s why we have come to the vision center to try to correct it. This underhanded shot at the squinters of the world is unnecessary. Why not just put up a big sign that proclaims “Need help Seeing? Skip the Eye Exam and Clunky Frames and just Walk Away with a Brand New Telescope!!”

They also sold, even more randomly, metal detectors in the vision center.

I didn’t see where they were going with that one until I read a little closer: “Now with a Bigger Digital Display Screen!” (That you might actually be able to see now Blindy.)