Glasses

Yesterday I wrote about how we, as human beings, like panes of glass. Today I am writing about something far more pragmatic and far more prosaic; eyeglasses, another pain of glass.

This morning I went to get my blood drawn, once again, for what is now my thrice weekly PT/INR test. I was slow in getting up so I delayed blogging for the morning with a plan to write post facto. After the vampirical moment I headed downstairs, or rather down elevator, from the blood lab where I happened upon the local Optometrist's shop. There was a sign in the window declaring for all and sundry to see that they had "NEW LOWER PRICES" and further declaring that their prices were lower than Walmart! Such a deal, thought I.

So in I went, with my first goal in mind to get myself a new prescription. I entered into the testing room where a charming young lady put me through a bunch of tests ranging to from looking at a fuzzy cartoon to getting puffs of air blown onto my eyeball. I even got to play some sort of video game where vertical bars were randomly flashed in varying parts of my field of vision, and I was to click the clicker when I saw the bars. Bars appeared, I clicked, and all was well.

Having tested the mechanics of my eyes, the nurse shepherded me into the Optometrist's office. There, after some wiggling and weaving of my power wheelchair concluded by a successful transfer into "the chair", he went through the whole confirmation and testing process. You know the one... "which is better, 1 or 2.. 1 or 3... 1 of 4?"

Having concluded the whole process he declared that my eyes were in almost the same state as they were when I last had them tested more than three years ago, an event that took place through pure happenstance in Seoul, Korea, but that is another story. So, it would appear that while ALS is claiming my muscles, my vision is unimpaired. Actually he was surprised; he had expected a much higher level of deterioration over these years. Yet here I was, visually stable, so to speak. I paid the $120 examination fee.

Then he took me out to look at eyeglass frames. This is the point at which all pretense of stability failed me. I saw the price tags on these bits of plastic with their flimsy base metal hinges. You would think they were made of gold, and perhaps some of them were. I simply do not understand how a plastic frame with a small set of hinges can be priced at $400! The salesperson said that it was the designers and manufacturers that set the prices. I said "I'm in the wrong business."

So I left and went to look at other shops. Still the same issue; ridiculous prices for the most basic of frames. Sure, the prices included lenses. So what? The lenses cost all of $50 to produce; I know this from having purchased lenses only a few years back. So I am now on a mission to find reasonably priced eyeglass frames; it's another pain of glass.