Twenty Years of Myopia

Let's take a little trip through the last 20 years of eyeglass fashion, shall we?

I got glasses in 1988-- about fourth grade. This was my first pair:

Big plastic goggles were the thing in the 80's, and they actually suited my face quite well.
(Please excuse the goofy expression-- I was excited about my Christmas presents.)

Then the 90's came along and everyone ran out and got wire frames with nose pads, but they were still big and round. I got some halfway through 6th grade.

You know what's funny about those glasses? Their brand name was Nintendo. Perfect for 1990.

When I was a junior in high school in 1996 I befriended a computer geek named Steve who had these exact glasses. But he was really embarrassed about the Nintendo because that was NOT perfect for 1996.

At the end of 7th grade I started wearing contacts, which did wonders for my self-esteem. See how happy I look?

The summer I was fourteen I went to my church's Girl's Camp deep in the northern Minnesota woods. Partway through the week I lost a contact lens. Alas, I did not have my Nintendo glasses with me for backup, and having clear vision in only one eye really messed up my depth perception, so I made my Mom (who was one of our leaders) drive me a million miles into Virginia, Minnesota where there was a Pearle Vision at the local mall. Poor Mom, I sure put her through a lot. Anyway, I picked out another pair of goggly plastic glasses because they were still sort of in fashion and I thought they suited my face well. But I was never really happy with them, as you can see from this picture:

I wore them for awhile that summer until I could get my contacts replaced.

I didn't ever want to wear glasses again. I was an Acuvue girl and I didn't think that would ever change.

But it did. After I had Bean my eyes got really dry from hormone changes. My contacts got more and more uncomfortable so I started wearing them less and less. When I was pregnant with Fish I went into America's Best to get some replacements for the Nintendo-style glasses I had and I was amazed at how small and square-ish lenses had gotten.

And they just keep getting smaller and squarer. This time at the eyeglass store there were several pairs I thought were children's pairs at first because the lenses were so small. Pretty soon we're all going to be wearing postage stamp spectacles. With thick plastic frames.

Or else maybe we're going to go back to this:



(I think my sister is right-- I think I DO look a great deal like my Mom!)