In Which the Eyes Have It

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ol’ Robbo rejoices this Saturday morning because he just picked up (and is currently wearing) his new contacts. I originally ordered them way back in August but somehow the order was lost and it is only now, after we finally broke through the automated telephone system and spoke to a real person, that the shemozzle has been sorted out.

I may have asked this before here, but is Ol’ Robbo the last person on earth who still wears hard, gas-permeable lenses? The fact seems to astonish the inmates of the glasses store – I heard one of them say she’d never handled hard lenses in 15 years of experience. Why is this? (I tried soft disposables once and hated them. They’re NBG for astigmatism, which I suffer along with both nearsightedness and farsightedness, and they also always felt like they were about to fall out.) I grow increasingly fearful that I’m going to go to the store for new cleaner and conditioning solution some day only to discover they’re not made anymore.

Anyhoo, this is the first time I’ve had contacts in my eyes in something like nine months now, my old pair (which were at least four years old) having worn out completely last spring. Since then, it’s been glasses non-stop, including the new pair I got in August. I mentioned to the doc today that they work well enough but by the end of the day I’m quite ready to take them off from the strain, but that I suppose there’s nothing to be done. He said the only other options were Lasik or a seeing-eye dog.

But as I say, here we are. Relatedly, Ol’ Robbo has never really been a particularly sociable person but I’ve noticed this year that I’ve become even less so. I sometimes think the glasses have something to do with it: Gazing out from behind those thick, plate-glass windows, I feel even more detached and remote from the world around me. Be interesting to see if the new regime causes a change in that. You might say we shall see……