I wanted a monocle

After a 12 year hiatus, I've started wearing eyeglasses again.

In addition to other mundane hassles such as strapping on a bicycle helmet, heeding medication side effect warnings, and wearing pants, I've been known to be stubborn in properly maintaining my eye sight. I was prescribed very minor corrective eyeglasses in 1996 and used them for about two years. They were useful in making out fine details at long distances, but beyond that, I could see just fine. For reasons I fail to recollect, I stopped using them and carried on without incidence.

After 5 years, I noticed my overall vision was getting worse, particularly at night and at long distance. I tried using my sense of smell to balance out my visual deficiencies, but years of cocaine use put that plan to a quick end.

Author's note: If any of my nephews or nieces are read this, Uncle Dave is just kidding with the Big People. If you treasure my ability to build you awesome Lego airplanes, you should immediately go to your parents and tell them that they are an epic failure at monitoring your internet use.

I could still get by, but occasions where I would fail to recognize familiar people until they were within 10 feet were becoming far too numerous for my reclusive personality. Thus, for the sake of my reclusive lifestyle (and to avoid petting possums that vaguely resemble housecats), I ordered some contact lenses. But Dave being Dave, I didn't pick them up from the Optometrist office until 4 months later.

After five years of regular contact lenses use, I've purchased eyeglasses as a backup. Despite my Optometrist's best efforts to fit me a be-jeweled monocle, I settled for a pair of foo-foo Pradas:

Seeing how it's the first day, I'm rather self-conscious wearing glasses. Of the people that have seen them on me, they say I look smart in them. Hearing this only makes me suspicious, as it reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer finds Henry Kissinger's glasses in a toilet, puts them on and says 'The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side!', to which a man in the next bathroom stall yells 'That's a right triangle, you idiot!'. D'oh!