I never take off my glasses

[conuly]

Well, unless I'm sleeping, showering, crying, or, sometimes, reading.

So I'm occasionally surprised by how bad my uncorrected vision actually is. Thing I learned today: If I take a glance at somebody very far away without my glasses, their bodies will blur so much that they'll look like a headless blob instead of a vaguely person-shaped blob. What is this? Is this the astigmatism?

****************************

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Comments

[fyrdrakken]

Not too long ago, I heard a story told on the Moth podcast that started out with the time the storyteller was five or six and just about to go onstage for her first ballet recital when a backstage mother yoinked her glasses off her face ("So you'll be pretty onstage!") and her vision at that age was already so bad she couldn't even tell which direction the audiene was and spent her entire time helplessly crashing into the other dancers. The horror of such casual blinding at the hands of others is going to stick with me for a while.

[conuly]

Oh. My. God.

Her daughter was already pretty. I hope that woman felt awful forever after.

[fyrdrakken]

The woman who took her glasses *wasn't her mother,* and whether that interfering stranger even realized what she'd done wasn't covered in the story.

But it's one more thing to fear about winding up in a hospital - having a staff member take off my glasses to get them out of the way and me not being able to see what's being done to me, or waking up with no idea where my glasses are.

[conuly]

That makes the story even worse. What a freaking jerk.