Get my AARP card ready!

I took advantage of my company's new vision insurance coverage and went to the eye doctor for the first time since I decided I no longer wanted to wear my geeky glasses as I prepared to enter junior high school. Well, my vanity caught up with me after almost 30 years.

I have to wear bifocals!

Since a very young age I had to wear glasses. Because of either financial situations at the time or just that eyewear fashion was an unknown term in the 60's all I had to wear were the classic Clark Kent style. Add to that I was asthmatic and into science fiction and I was the stereotype of what a geek was supposed to be. Or as the tormentors of my youth used to call me......."Faggot!"

Puberty was rearing its ugly head on me when I entered Gorton Junior High School in the fall of 1975. I knew this was when girls started noticing guys and I wanted in on it. Clark Kent had to go so I simply decided not to wear them any more.

I can vividly recall the moment I took them off. I was riding my bicycle around my neighborhood and as the thought brewed in my mind I stopped, took off the horrendous spectacles of my youth and was ready to ride home as a young man. I marveled at the feeling on the wind blowing against my naked eyes. My eyebrows rustled unfettered by plastic frames. I was my own man!

Looking back, now as a parent myself, I have no idea how my parents didn't simply staple the damned things to my head and tell me to wear then no matter what. According to my older sisters, there was a lot I got away with that they never would have even tried.

Jealous is an ugly thing.

In the past few years I have grown more and more annoyed as having to wait until highway signs were within an eighth of a mile to read them. It was when the telephone book became completely illedgible that I decided to look into the insurance coverage. Since we're so close to the holidays I had to opt for the least expensive possible; no flexible frames or magnetic sunglasses. I did, however, go for the closest to the Lennon style granny glasses as I could find.

My oldest sister laughed outloud when I told her.

Jealousy is a very ugly thing.

Mom's been gone five years today and I still hear her laughing.

Today it's probably about the glasses.