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By Vicki Austin

So, here’s my latest shameful secret.

I have acquired yet another pair of corrective lenses. This completes my collection at exactly seven different matched sets, which includes:

• glasses for nearsightedness (old faithful);

• two different contact lens prescriptions (distance and bifocals);

• blue light glasses (I welcome you, Covid-19 teaching online);

• reading glasses (Dollar Store stock-ups);

• progressive lenses (the newest and much-hated addition as they literally make me seasick); and

• sunglasses (my failing eyeballs are super light sensitive).

I lied. The total is actually more like 12 since I’ve littered my home and car with cheap readers, such is my addiction.

I remember years ago when my mom called to tell me that she couldn’t play the piano anymore because her eye doctor could not get her prescription right for reading music. I said all the right sympathetic things while sincerely thinking, “Oh, Mom, you obviously aren’t choosing correctly when you visit Doc Occ…” You know, “Better one, better two? Better two, better three, four...?”

Karma is the WORST.

Last week, before giving me my progressives, my doctor listened to exactly three tales of personal woe, sighed and then patiently explained why every option available to the most-unlucky me would result in some loss of clarity of vision. Seriously, we can put a man on the moon, but I don’t get to SEE his dusty footprint.

After delivering this delightful message, Dr. Smartie Pants left me alone to ponder a blurry magazine as his eye drops of torture contorted my pupils.

Turning the pages, I stumbled upon the following ad.

Do you need more than three pairs of eyeglasses to get through the day (i.e. daytime readers, shades, blue light, evening progressive lenses)?

Do you have one or more driving violations resulting from your chaotic, on-road rifling through the glove box for just the right pair of eyewear?

Do you repeatedly forget what you were doing and where you were when you last wore your wired orbs, only to stumble around blindly for hours, emerging at last to find them firmly planted on your head?

Have you tucked your gilded frames down into a brown bag way at the bottom of your underwear drawer when that special someone comes calling, out of shame they may discover your shameful secret?

Do you deny your trouble, or get angry when your loved ones confront you, noting your desperate need for nose-supported convex lenses?

Do you forget what you did while wearing these glossy accessories?

Do you need help deciphering the difference between Ellsworth, your poorly groomed neighbor (face it, we all know could really use a wax) and his crotch-loving English Sheepdog, Sammy? (Last week’s block party went a little too far, didn’t it?)

Call if you say yes to any or all of these. I am here to help.

Well, I pulled out my cell phone, squinted the best I could, and immediately dialed the number. The deep voice on the other end of the line was eager to take down my digits. I just had to hold while Dr. Smartie Pants went to find his glasses.

*Author’s note: While the second half of this tale, features a questionable ad, OK, a false ad that I never actually SAW, the lens count is 100 percent true. Sympathy cards may be sent to my address in Blindsville. In lieu of cards, please send money. I lost my very expensive and newly acquired glasses. I am pretty sure they are not on my head.

— Vicki Austin

Vicki Austin, faculty at Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School, lives with her family in Kingston, Pennsylvania. Vicki has more than 25 years of experience in many facets of education and is currently shifting her writing focus from persuasive to creative. Vicki’s most recent work has been featured on the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop blog, included in the online journals Projected Letters and Wraparound South and printed in The Walls Between Us: Essays in Search of Truth, a Juncture publication. You can find Vicki on Twitter @VickiAustin02 and send encouragement as she finishes her first novel.