I Wear Glasses; What of it?

I recently asked a friend about the ubiquity of black square rimmed glasses. He responded that he hadn’t noticed and accused me of hypersensitivity. While his indictment may be true, I suspect there is a deeper explanation for my observation

In 2001, my best friend and I purchased tickets to our first concert. We had been rabid Weezer fans for over two months, which made us pretty hard-core at the time, and inflated our sense of fanhood to epic proportions. In the weeks leading up to the event, my friend and I spent every minute between classes conferring over lyrics and possible interpretations of the lead singer’s inflections in our favorite songs. We read articles about the band like they were sacred scriptures brought down by Moses from the mountainside. Our interest in the band members soon blossomed into a full on obsession with the lead singer, Rivers Cuomo. Every detail about Mr. Cuomo’s life was carefully processed and memorized. On top of the incessant fact gathering that resembled an FBI investigation, pictures of the heroic vocalist hung on my locker door like illuminated manuscripts.

What made Rivers so appealing was that he transcended nerdiness and became a rock star. See, Rivers wasn’t just a commercial stand-in for a nerdy celebrity. He graduated from Berklee College of Music and achieved high honors at Harvard. I on the other hand was struggling through Algebra 1 and had read Lord of the Flies. No matter, I wanted to be like him.

After weeks of waiting, the night of the concert finally arrived. As we walked through the turnstiles I still couldn’t fathom that the object of my imagination was going to materialize on stage. The crowd filed in, eventually, and the opening band (Saves the Day, another band I would come to revere) took the stage. After fits of nervous twitching and compulsive watch-checking, Weezer appeared from behind the curtain. They immediately fired up a rousing rendition of “Buddy Holly.” The rest of the night was a blur, but I remember being transfixed on Rivers for the entirety of the show.

The following week I suffered separation anxiety and could not resolve my longing. That’s when I had the idea that will now serve as a flag of public embarrassment.

What I loved most about Rivers was that he could pass the Massachusetts bar exam on Saturday morning and sell out Fenway Park that night. He had everything, including a pair of bold black square rimmed glasses. I saw those glasses as the gateway to intelligence and notoriety. Sure, I had 20/20 vision and no history of ocular trauma, but those glasses meant so much more than simple corrective lenses. Like any other precocious high school freshman, I scrambled for a way to get my hands on a pair.

Step 1: Read up on visual disorders and make sure to know symptoms of long and short sightedness.

Step 2: Slowly begin to allude to these symptoms in casual conversations with parents.

Step 3: While complaining of degenerative eye disorder, inquire about family insurance coverage for optometrists.

Step 4: Blame lackluster grades on poor vision.

With all the pieces in place, I sat in the lobby of Lenscrafters checking out the styles of glasses plotting my selection. A woman behind the counter called my name and I jumped into a half sprint toward a chair stationed across the room from various charts of scrambled letters. The doctor entered and I humored his bedside manner while imaging the glasses I had picked waiting for me in the adjacent room. Finally we got to the examination and I failed with brilliance, all the while singing the words to “Surf Wax America” in my head. The doctor shook his head in amazement that a person in my condition had survived years of debilitating retinal damage. I shrugged and said it confounded me too.

I walked out of the store with a pair of glasses that resembled the style of my hero’s, but to my dismay held lenses that were absolutely ridiculous. I had overplayed my hand.

The next day at school I slid the spectacles out of my backpack and fitted them on the bridge of my nose. The world was instantly upside down. It was a minor setback. As the school day wore on, though, I fought spells of nausea and even excused myself from class at one point to deal with an extreme case of dizziness. How could this be? Where had I gone wrong?

Over the course of the next week the headaches were too much and I had to wear the glasses intermittently. Eventually, they ended up on my bedside table where I used them for short periods of reading when I could stomach the cruel side effects.

The whole ordeal was mildly traumatic and to this day when I see others donning similar frames I have flashbacks of migraines and vertigo. Unfortunately these glasses have become absolutely rampant among my peers and I am constantly reminded of my tryst with dysfunctional fashion. My undying hope is that the trend dies out and I will be absolved of my teenage chicanery. But everyday it seems there are more and more reminders of my fraudulent past. Therefore, I ask that these bifocals be deemed out of style so I can live my life.