I wore glasses from nine or ten (I asked my mom last night and she couldn’t remember either) until I was 37 and then robots shot lasers into my eyes and suddenly I could see. At my very last checkup for my LASIK, my doctor said something like “at this point, you can act as though your eyes have always been like this and you won’t need to get eye checkups until you’re 40 and need reading glasses like everyone”.

I was a little offended. Like everyone? I’m not everyone—I just had robots shoot lasers into my eyes! Doesn’t that take care of that?

It does not. But it wasn’t at 40, it was this year. And it wasn’t just close reading, which seemed to be worst in the morning as I woke up, and worst in my left eye, but also distance, which seemed to be worst in my right eye. I gave in and went and got an eye exam and got told that while the LASIK had fixed my myopia and they had taken a stab at my astigmatism, the latter could sort of come back. (Don’t quote me on my half-remembered explanation from my eye doctor.) And the reading problems were classic “getting old”.

So, I got myself some glasses. I don’t need them all the time—I forgot them the other day and worked just fine all day, and I never wear them running. But it’s interesting dipping back into the world of “sticking a device on your face” when that was such a part of my life for so many years, and then suddenly wasn’t for the last nine.

Ten years ago, I had been wearing glasses for 25 years and so I think I had settled on a style of glasses called “please ignore that I am wearing glasses”. This time around, it’s fresh enough that I decided to go for “why yes, I am wearing glasses!” glasses.