wow, sometimes i get so tired of being unique, it isn't a very useful way to be. I was googling 'where can i get glasses that will stay up on my head when i'm not using them?' and i got this discussion on macrumors as a link. i was hoping so much that someone would have the same issue as me. i wish i knew better search terms to use for my problem. it's a life long problem to have no words for an experience i have that others don't have.
where i used to keep my glasses when i wasn't using them was up on my head. i am someone who travels as light as possible, which keeps losing things to a minimum. So when i wasn't using my glasses, i just pushed them up on my head. I didn't get this idea from out of nowhere, i saw people who wore their glasses up on their heads, i think maybe it was their sunglasses, since wearing sunglasses indoors makes it hard to see, too dark.
That's when i first started pushing my sun glasses up on my head, when i wasn't outside, like at the office. If i was at home, i'd leave my sun glasses in my car. but i got into the habit of wearing them in my head during the work day, i worked in the field and visited clients and other outings and i just kept them on my head. i only wore ray ban wayfarers. i got my first pair when a drunk person leaving the bar across the street from my apartment was making a lot of noise together with some kindred spirits and then there was a huge shaking of my apartment building and the lights went off and back on. i went downstairs to see what happened, after hearing their voices get more and more distant, laughing and shouting.
On the street behind the building i found they had pushed a big dumpster down the ramp going to the underground parking beneath the building and it crashed into the electronic gate to get into the parking lot. i started walking back to my apartment. walking up that ramp from the dumpster, i saw something on the ground on the sidewalk, it was a pair of ray ban wayfarers, nonprescription. i never could have afforded those glasses back then, i was a full time grad student on AFDC, but i used to watch Miami Vice every week and Don Johnson's character wore those sun glasses which looked cool, and he probably pushed them up on his head when he was indoors. i just felt so lucky those guys had pushed the dumpster down the ramp, even though the gate to the parking lot was broken for several weeks. Those glasses always stayed up on my head. i thought all glasses stay up on your head if you want them to.
that was in the 80s.
in around the 2000s, maybe mid 2000s, not sure, i started needing glasses to read. i bought a couple of pairs or reading glasses at SavOn or Rite Aid or somewhere. i pushed them up on my head when i wasn't using them to see, which was when i wasn't reading. but they were $15 or more and i tended to lose them or break them. Someone at my office said she gets hers at the 99 cent store, and so i started doing that, and buying a huge supply of them in a style i liked. Not every style stayed up on my head when not using them so i spent time trying on every pair and testing them to make sure they sturdily stayed up on my head, not slipping and falling off. i took for granted that i would always be able to do this. Even though sometimes someone at work would make fun of me for always having those glasses on my head--what's wrong with that? i did not understand why other people didn't do that. What could be more convenient than having my glasses right there at my finger tips when i needed them and easy to push out of the way when they made seeing difficult, for driving or seeing the TV. i wasn't always ready, but i was reading a lot, so why would i want to go searching for my glasses or keeping them some place where they could get broken? why add bulk to my pockets? i thought wearing glasses up on your head was the obvious solution. but clearly it's not for everyone. it's not even for anyone but me.
This issue came up because two or three years ago i finally needed prescription glasses, both nearness and distance needed help. i got bifocals. i soon found that there were some commonly needed distances that were most clearly seen with my eyes with no glasses, like washing the dishes---with my glasses on, i can't clearly see stuff on the dish that needs to be washed off, and it gets left of the dish because the glasses impair my vision for that. Or at the market, thing on shelf, i can't read it with the near or farther lens of the bifocals, i can clearly see it without my glasses. But my hands are full. i wish i could just push those glasses up on my head not wear them unless i need them, but when i got prescription glasses, to my surprise, unlike the 99 cent store glasses, the frames at the optometrist's office did not stay up. They just fell off, like if i looked back, they fell back. if looked down, they fell back on my face, impairing my vision. My optometrist made fun of me for being so picky. ??? Everyone does 't want to see the best they can? Other people don't mind having glasses impair their vision? i'm used to seeing good all my life so that's what i expect, and 99 cent store glasses frames work good, why not the more expensive ones at the optometrists's office? After the first pair of frames failed to serve that purpose, instead wanting to force poorer vision than my natural uncorrected, vision on me, i went through my supply of 99 cent store glasses and found the ones that stayed up on my head when not needed and had my prescription lenses put in those. Now, my last two pair are wearing out and i know it's just a matter of time.
That's why i googled those search terms, but apparently no one really minds that there is no technology to meet the need of having glasses that can be switched off and on in an instant, with the flick of a finger. I find myself wearing my glasses when not needed and having my vision blurred and feeling angry about it. Because i'm accustomed to having the technology to solve this problem of a need to switch between glasses and no glasses, i know the world could be so much better, so much less frustrating, so easy. but the technology isn't there. i have gone back to the 99 cent store but couldn't find glasses in a style i liked. it used to be that i could find anything using google but i'm having that less and less as time goes by.
About some people's comments about having distance vision problems and then finding that the problem has gone away a few years later, i had this experience--long ago, way before i wore reading glasses, i noticed that i had increasing trouble reading signs like street names and off ramp names, so i went to an optometrist and got glasses for seeing clearer at distances, i kept them in my glove compartment in my car. i rarely used them. i found i didn't need them. At some point i went to an opthalmologist for some pain in my eye (it was a kind of dry eye) and when he did a full examination of my eyes, i was wearing the 99 cent store glasses for reading by then and his exam picked that up, and he said my long distance vision was perfect . i was surprised that i once used to have problems and now i didn't. He said it's because over time the shape of the eye can change, it elongates in one direction and then it later will go the opposite direction, and a person can go from having far vision impairment to having near vision impairment, and instead of the vision in general, near and far, getting worse over time, there is that switching from one to the other, since the impairment is related to the shape of the eye. One of the people who replied to this conversation talked about different kinds of vision impairment that glasses may correct for and they talked about this one. i didn't know the name for it until reading that post.
