Glasses Half Full

I am falling apart.

I shuffle around on a bum right leg I blew out in pilates. I lug my Metamucil and other middle-aged supplies with an achy arm slathered in Icy Hot Balm. And I wrack my tired brain to grasp for people and words that were in there yesterday.

This unraveling did not happen overnight. But I tend to trace it back very clearly, or unclearly, to the following incident.

A few years ago, I was (air quotes) “reading” (air quotes) US Weekly and the pictures of Spiedi were a little blurry. “Hmm, “ I thought, “better lay off the Vodka and Diet A&W.” The next morning I missed a conference call because I couldn’t read the call-in number, and that night I ordered the “Skate” instead of the “Steak” because I couldn’t read the menu.

WTF.

Unlike JSlow, I do not look good in glasses. My face is small, and in sunglasses I’ve been called things like “Atom Ant Face,” “Fly face,” or other names insect related.

I needed reading glasses. There was no way around it. I hated them. Everything about them screamed YOU ARE OLD. I could really do without the additional advertising of that obvious fact. My mom wore them. I looked like MY MOM in them.

I looked like an old fly in them.

I bought my first pair of reading glasses at the car wash. Once you need readers, you notice them EVERYWHERE.  And since I could not read anything without them, I needed pairs for every room in the house, in every bag, everywhere. The need to buy multiples opened my eyes (bad pun intended) to the many interesting shapes and colors and frames there were, and how I needed to look at the “glasses” as half “full”, not half “empty.”

This, my friends, became a new category of fashion and shopping for me. I turned a physical liability into a fashion opportunity.

Eyebobs were a revelation. Talk about the glasses as “half full.” To wit, the “Half Wit”:

Note the tape – I sat on them, which not only crushed the glasses, but crushed me. They’ve been discontinued, so I am screwed. Miracle of miracles, they contacted me last week as a pair had turned up.  They are en route. I am in heaven.

Expanding on the retro frame/nerd theme, I recently purchased the Fizz Ed, also from Eyebobs:

Another problem:  When outside and needing to, oh, read a map, a sign, my iphone, I’d have to put my readers on over my sunglasses (either Raybans or vintage Lanvins) which was a pain in the ass.

Enter sunglass readers. The Helen Back from Eyebobs:

And then there’s this inexpensive pair of CliCs (pairs, as of course I have them in every color) that have caused stampedes by the Barney’s co-op sales staff that I stupidly thought were running over to fawn over my Preen reversible leather/lamb jacket. They hang around my neck and “click” to open and close at the nose by a magnet. The clicking noise is key, and can be used to great effect when clicking them into position.

People go nuts for them.  Strangers stop me in the streets. Clients listen to what I have to say. They stay put around my neck, meaning I don’t leave them on buses or in cabs or at Starbucks (like umbrellas.)

They rule.

And somehow, I don’t feel like a fly anymore. Or even an old fly. I feel

FLY.