Hah, I actually got glasses first in the 4th grade, and the only reason I did was because I failed three spelling tests in a row. Like, FAILED-failed. The first one had my mother upset, the second one had her moving into baffled, and then on the third one, she sat down and quizzed me before getting mad, because if there was one thing I was consistently good at, it was spelling and grammar. When I spelled every word right, cold, Mom goes: something is wrong here. Then she asked me how we were tested, and I said the teacher mixed up the word and wrote it on the board, and we'd each write down the correct spelling. Then she'd erase and write the next word, messed-up. Problem: I tended to talk back to that teacher, so she'd put me at the back of the classroom as punishment... and Mom goes AHAH, YOU CAN'T SEE THE BOARD. And I'm all, sure I can! The teacher just can't write properly, her g's look like f's and her s's look like x's and her i's look like t's and Mom's going UNH-HUNH.
Off we go to eye doctor, I get glasses, then to the base exchange where the only eyeglasses for kids were the horrendous military-grade el cheapo big freaking glasses with plastic frames OMG THE UGLY... but I went right back to getting 100s on my spelling tests... and about that point, figured out the good part of being put at the back of the class was that the teacher couldn't tell if I had a book under my desk. Far as the teacher was concerned, I was keeping quiet, so she was happy, and she was leaving me alone (to read Shogun, bwahahaha) so I was happy. Life was about as good as it could get, if we ignore the military's horrible non-concept of fashion for kids. Sigh.
As for glasses making your eyes worse... well, not really. It's more that our eyes age at different rates, in a sense, and when we've got glasses, we're using them in a slightly different fashion, which can cause strain. Over the past however many years of needing eye-fixes (for the first five years, and then contacts starting in HS, and then a few years here and there where all I wore was glasses), I've noticed the vision gets worse independent, really, of whether it's glasses or contacts. It has a lot more to do with what you're doing -- reading, detail-oriented work (like, say, COLLEGE!) versus less detailed stuff like when I had the bookstore. When you're not spending hours with your nose in a book squinting at the fine print, your eyesight will degrade at a much lower speed. (Not to mention that wearing contacts has its own bundle of issues that are never a problem with glasses, like infections, corneal scratches, and so on.)
Plus, low light really doesn't help, but I've yet to see any proof that sitting too close to the TV makes your eyes bad. I mean, mom had like a twenty-foot rule on the television for that reason, and here I am. Fat lot of good that rule did me, hunh. And all those carrots, damn it!
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 01:08 am (UTC)Off we go to eye doctor, I get glasses, then to the base exchange where the only eyeglasses for kids were the horrendous military-grade el cheapo big freaking glasses with plastic frames OMG THE UGLY... but I went right back to getting 100s on my spelling tests... and about that point, figured out the good part of being put at the back of the class was that the teacher couldn't tell if I had a book under my desk. Far as the teacher was concerned, I was keeping quiet, so she was happy, and she was leaving me alone (to read Shogun, bwahahaha) so I was happy. Life was about as good as it could get, if we ignore the military's horrible non-concept of fashion for kids. Sigh.
As for glasses making your eyes worse... well, not really. It's more that our eyes age at different rates, in a sense, and when we've got glasses, we're using them in a slightly different fashion, which can cause strain. Over the past however many years of needing eye-fixes (for the first five years, and then contacts starting in HS, and then a few years here and there where all I wore was glasses), I've noticed the vision gets worse independent, really, of whether it's glasses or contacts. It has a lot more to do with what you're doing -- reading, detail-oriented work (like, say, COLLEGE!) versus less detailed stuff like when I had the bookstore. When you're not spending hours with your nose in a book squinting at the fine print, your eyesight will degrade at a much lower speed. (Not to mention that wearing contacts has its own bundle of issues that are never a problem with glasses, like infections, corneal scratches, and so on.)
Plus, low light really doesn't help, but I've yet to see any proof that sitting too close to the TV makes your eyes bad. I mean, mom had like a twenty-foot rule on the television for that reason, and here I am. Fat lot of good that rule did me, hunh. And all those carrots, damn it!