Here on Main Street: Four Eyes Are Better Than Two

I have a good memory, but relying on it too much can cause problems.

One night last year I went to bed and then got an idea around 2 a.m. Has that ever happened to you? You go to bed and you start thinking of things: Maybe there’s a problem you have to solve at work, and you think of it at 2 a.m. Do you get up immediately and write it down, or do you say to yourself, “Nah, I’ll remember it in the morning.” I always do the latter. Whether it’s an important thought or a dream, I always think I’m going to remember it in the morning.

I never remember it in the morning.

This particular thought wasn’t something I could write down; it was an important email I had intended to send before I went to bed. I wanted the person to get it first thing in the morning. But I couldn’t get up and send it. Why?

I wear contact lenses.

I’ve gotten to the age where I can’t work on my computer without wearing my contacts, and I’m not going to go through the hassle of stumbling around in the middle of the night to put in my contacts, open my computer, compose an email, send it, and then take out my contact lenses again. What a pain.

Wear them to bed? No, I’ve done that a couple of times and I found out that I actually don’t like waking up with little plastic discs superglued to my eyeballs.

So I had to get up earlier than I had planned in the morning to send the email.

You’re probably thinking, why doesn’t this guy just get eyeglasses? DING DING DING. You win a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni! Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat! 

I haven’t worn glasses in 30 years. Sometime in the late ’90s I became someone who wore contacts exclusively. Was it vanity? Not wanting to carry around and clean glasses all the time? Probably a combination. I just thought that contacts were “easier” to deal with and I looked “better” in contacts. A lot of people think that way.

But a couple of months after the not-being-able-to-send-the-email-at-2-a.m. incident, when I was at my eye doctor appointment, I got a pair of glasses (I had a free pair coming to me, thanks to my insurance). I got them just in case I needed them when I had already taken off my contacts. Those late nights or early mornings. You know, as a backup.

I started wearing them more and more, even during the day and early evenings, when working and watching TV and going to the store. And I started to realize something.

I didn’t like wearing contacts anymore.

Maybe I should clarify that. It’s not the wearing of the contacts I hate; it’s having to put them in in the morning and take them out at night. It’s an irritating chore right up there with flossing my teeth and trimming my eyebrows. (They’re approaching an Andy Rooney-ish level of bushiness.)

How could this happen? I distinctly remember not liking glasses when I was a kid. Having to take them off all of the time to clean them. The little screws becoming loose and having to repair them with a special small screwdriver. The kids calling me “four eyes.” One time a kid got mad at me and snapped them in half.

Of course, one could say that even a person who wears contact lenses could be called “four eyes,” but you can’t really see contact lenses unless you get uncomfortably close to someone, so it’s still two eyes. (Besides, I’d have to change the title of this article.)

I actually like taking my glasses off to clean them! Is that weird? There’s something pleasing, even peaceful about cleaning them. I like the ritual. I like tossing them gently on the table and rubbing between the eyes at the top of my nose, to show that I’m a serious person who is working hard and a little stressed.

I’m also saving money because I no longer have to buy contact lens cleaner and new cases. Those days when an eye is a little dry or watery or red? Before, I’d have to go without a contact in that eye or wait until the irritation subsided. Now that isn’t a problem anymore.

All of this has given me a truly bizarre sense of freedom that’s hard to describe.

(I know I sound like someone who has just discovered gold in their backyard, but it really has been a revelation.)

I keep thinking of people in the past who either didn’t have the option to wear contacts because they weren’t around or simply decided not to wear them. Did Bennett Cerf wear contacts? Ogden Nash? Harold Lloyd? Teddy Roosevelt? Edith Head? Benjamin Franklin? Waldo of “Where’s Waldo” fame? They got along just fine.

The only time I can think wearing contacts would be advantageous is if I were doing something physical. Oh, and being out in the rain or snow. I was shoveling a few weeks ago with my glasses on while sleet was coming down, and I had to go back inside and take them off.

It’s not that I’m abandoning contacts lenses completely. But instead of contacts being what I wear every day and eyeglasses being my backup, I’ve switched things around.

I don’t know what’s happening to me as I get older. First I started to like low-fat milk and bourbon, two things I thought in my twenties I would never like, and then I stopped driving a car. Now I’m going back to wearing eyeglasses?

The only downside? When I take my glasses off, I have these big marks, right above the ears. I have such a giant head. That’s one good thing about contacts. They don’t care how big your head is.