Vision? Yes, I have that now.

[chronarchy]

MJD, grade 4Yesterday, I received new glasses. While this is not really an earth shattering point for most people, I would point out that approximately 1.5% of my LJ friends have ever seen me wear glasses. The first two are red_sput, my brother, and whitmanschild, the LJ friend outside my family who has known me for the longest (and still, for some reason, subjects himself to reading my blog). These are the only two people who have ever seen me regularly wear my glasses in public. withak53 is the only other person on this list who has seen me in my glasses semi-regularly at any point.

I ceased wearing glasses in 1993, when I received my first contacts. I very rarely wore them outside my house until college, when I stopped wearing them completely in front of other people.

In fact, for eleven years, only the women I have actually had sex with have seen me in my glasses. By some freak accident, they all have. Of course, given the low number of women I've slept with (no, I'm not giving that number out, but I'll bet you know it), I suppose it's not all that surprising. (This makes for an amusing litmus test: "So, seen chronarchy wear his glasses?" "Oh, yeah. . ." *porn groove music plays in background*)

Until today.

Now, lest you think that me not wearing my glasses is just some sort of vanity, let me assure you, it is totally not. How can I prove this? Simple. Just look at the state the damn things are in:



Yep, that's what they look like today.

While I'm proud to have finally found a good use for the coefficient of static friction as applied to corrective lenses (sounds like a paper topic. . .), I have to admit that they were nearly unwearable. Still, I am the kind of guy to persevere. As a result, I might mention the timeline of these glasses.

• They pretty much looked like that, gunk-wise, when I got to OSU my freshman year (1997). By then, they were already at least three years old, possibly as much as five years old.
• I lost a variety of screws (not that kind) the first three years of college, replacing them on occasion, but rarely from necessity: more out of a sick desire to keep the glasses limping along.
• The paperclip was the first thing to be added, in 2000. The screw was stripped out, and so replacement wasn't an option. I bent the crap out of a paperclip and chopped it down to size in the OSU's Fencing armoury using some of the handy tools there.
• The other leg went in 2003. That leg just flat out broke, leaving me with no way of repairing it short of getting new frames. But I was a Boy Scout, and so went through my workbench looking for some way to do a round lashing, but thread wouldn't cut it. So electrical tape it was, and to maintain the length, I used a toothpick as a splint.
• Finally, one night while watching Garbage on PBS' Soundstage, (July 6, 2006) the right lens finally popped out. The screw stripped, I tried soldering it back into place a couple of times, but settled on fishing wire as the best bet. This particular break pissed me off, because Shirley Manson is feckin' hot, and thus I naturally really wanted to hear and see the television.

And that's how the glasses got into this state.

So, really, I can't be blamed for not wanting to wear them. They constantly fell off my face and were really only good enough to get me from the sink to bed, and possibly to read a bit. Still, I persevered.

For years, Tina had been bugging me to get new glasses. I don't blame her. I'd have bugged me too. So this year I finally did.

Maggie picked out the glasses, and now I'm wearing them. In public. Mostly because I can rely on them to stay on my face. And the prescription is not old enough to drive.

And let's face it: glasses rock.

So, without further ado: