Progressive lenses - eyeglasses with three distinct areas of varying vision requirements - are one of the most unprogressive inventions of humankind.
Yesterday I spent a good part of the day with pliers in one hand and my progressive lenses in the other. They are out of whack. They are off kilter. They are not lining up. I am going insane!
My neck is now out of alignment because I am behaving like one of those toys that some people put on their car dashboard. Do you know what I mean? I am referring to those little dogs or famous people like Marilyn Munroe or a member of the Vancouver Canucks. I think they may be called toggleheads. They have tiny, skinny bodies and big, big heads that joggle around every time the car moves. I think I may be moving my head in a similar way in an attempt to find a clear line of vision. Forget the optician. I think I may need an exorcist. Got a cross?
I have tried taking them to not one, not two, but three places that sell glasses and are supposed to fix glasses. I even went back to the place where I bought them - a factory - and they went so far as to put little black lines on the lenses in an attempt to line them up. I peer through them for a few seconds, I look around, I look down at some text and I think they are okay. They seem better. I am ecstatic. I can forget my glasses. I can just see. Then, I leave and I find out very quickly that they are not fine. I am still am not able to see clearly. "Maybe it's not your eyes. Maybe it's your ears. Maybe your ears are sagging," said one of my friends.
Thanks. Thanks for your words of wisdom.
I don't know about you but when I can't see, it's as if I also can not hear, I can not speak, I can not function.
I find myself staring at people as if they are alien beings who have just dropped off another planet and I am trying to recall where I have met them before. I believe that is how I am now looking at people as a result of my progressive lenses being unprogressively out of whack.
None of this would matter. On a typical day this would just fit into the category of minor inconvenience. However, I no longer have typical days. I have interviews. I am attempting to interact with people who don't know me during interviews. And, as a result, I must pretend to be a superhuman speciman of perfection who is normal beyond normal so that I do not scare them and so they will want to weigh the odds of hiring me over hiring their friends, people they have gotten drunk with, slept with, and have experienced, firsthand. No sense jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
When I am looking at them through these lenses at this point in time, I am sorely falling short of the perfection mark. And, of course, interviews are not meant for imperfection. You can not start an interview by saying, "Don't mind me if I'm staring at you a bit like Glenn Close right before she cooked the bunny in the movie "Fatal Attraction". "It's just my progressive lenses. They're off. Don't let it worry you. Trust me!"
Let's just say, at the moment, I'm a walking advertisement for laser surgery.