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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Finding A Reason To Stick A Finger In His Eye

Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Revi

Lately, I’ve been squinting deeply into the issue of contact lenses vs. eyeglasses.

Many of us will grapple with this question at some point in our lives. The stakes are enormous.

If you go one way, you’ll spend the rest of your life messing with those weird lens-cleaning solutions. If you go the other way, you’ll spend the rest of your life with those little red nose-piece imprints on either side of your nose.

I’m a glasses man; here, let me show you my nose-piece imprints. They look like angry red armies, fighting to seize control of the bridge of my nose.

That’s what happens when you wear glasses every day for 30 years. I’m surprised my skin hasn’t grown right around those nose-pieces, the way tree bark grows right around an old scar.

Despite these charming pink nose-tattoos, I’ve never once been tempted to switch to contact lenses.

Well, there was the time I was 13 and went to see “Barbarella” for the express purpose of seeing Jane Fonda topless. I forgot my glasses, and for all I could tell, Fonda spent the whole movie in a muumuu.

Other than that, though, I have never seen the need to switch to contacts. I’m above such foolish vanity.

Hold on a second while I pat my remaining hairs back into place over my bald spot.

As I was saying, such vanity is shallow and foolish and beneath my principled self.

But the real reason I’ve never been tempted by contact lenses is that I’m squeamish about putting things in my eyes. For me, even using eye drops is a complicated, two-person, half-hour process, involving a cherry-picker and heavy sedation.

However, lately I’ve been thinking about contact lenses because my daughter, Kate, has been begging for contact lenses for a year. This is not an uncommon request from a girl fast approaching her teens, but we had already tried every stalling tactic we could think of:

“You have to wait until your eyes stop growing,” we told her, based on absolutely no ophthalmological evidence whatsoever. “Otherwise, your eyes might grow right around your contact lenses, like tree bark around a…”

“Oh, please,” she said.

So I started making a mental list of the drawbacks of each kind of eyewear.

Contact lens disadvantages:

Easy to lose.

You have to stick them right in your eye.

Sometimes you get them in backward, causing you to blink a lot.

Have to clean them and soak them and generally do everything except run them through the dishwasher.

For a couple of tiny pieces of plastic, they sure are expensive.

Eyeglasses disadvantages:

Easy to lose.

Easy to break.

Can make you look like a dork, assuming that sort of thing bothers you.

Easy to get bent out of shape during football or kick-boxing.

They can get caught up in your sweater while pulling it over your head.

Can’t wear them while swimming or in the hot tub.

They fog up while skiing.

You’ll have to carry prescription sunglasses around, unless you want to be seen in those nerdy clip-ons.

Make you look 20 years older, although not necessarily 20 years smarter.

They not only cause nose-marks, but also ear-marks.

For a couple of pieces of wire and plastic, they sure are expensive.

After adding up these columns, we gave Kate the go-ahead to get contact lenses. Within days, she had mastered the art of installing them and extracting them, using a minimum of hand tools.

The entire experience made me re-think my own views on contact lenses. In fact, I was toying with the idea of going spec-less. Why not try contact lenses?

“I wouldn’t at your age,” said my wife, a veteran of both kinds of eyewear. “Contact bifocals are a much more difficult proposition than regular bifocals.”

“What?” I said. “I don’t need bifocals.”

She just gave me a knowing look. I have no idea what she meant by it.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review