Cleaning out some old folders in my desk I came across this essay I wrote in 1992, pre-Lasik, pre-cataracts, when I was doing some magazine writing and submitting. It seemed appropriate to include here today because glasses are still an everyday concern for me as witnessed by the fact that yesterday I dropped mine on the floor, then promptly stepped on them, breaking off of the earpiece.

After 64 years you’d think I’d realize that glasses are just a necessary evil in my life and not the fashion accessory I still consider them.

I submit the following for your consideration.

Without corrective lenses, I am legally blind. 20/500 in one eye, which means that what ordinary people see at 500 feet must be 20 from me. I doubt I could see it even then. I have to hold my own hand inches from my face to see how many fingers I am holding up.

It’s been this way since I was 9 years old, when I got my first pair of glasses–an innocent baby blue. The next year, in third grade, when my eyes began to deteriorate every six months warranting a new pair, I chose bright red ones. My class picture shows me looking very vixen-ish in a black sweater, red scarf and red glasses. I was 9.

A paintbox of colors followed. I remember white with silver flecks in sixth grade, bookish black cateyes in seventh. The next year, when I was 14, I was fitted with contact lenses–the pre-soft, pre-disposable, pre-gas-permeable lenses. These were shards of hard plastic we mostly spat on when they needed lubrication.

I squinted in pain for a year until my mother told me I looked unapproachable, and I began to practice looking wide-eyed in the mirror. I never wore glasses in public again. Except for that time in 9th grade when I lost a lens down the drain and had to wear my same 7th grade black glasses to school.

The boy I believed hung the moon sat in front of me in math. We never spoke. But that day he turned around and with all the tact of a typical 9th grade boy, grinned and said, “Hi, four eyes.” The moon fell that day.

22 years later I found I could no longer wear my beloved contacts. I had spat on them one too many times, I suppose, and I was forced to wear the dreaded glasses once again.

Looking on this as an opportunity to make a fashion statement–after all, glasses are certainly the most prominent thing on one’s face, except, perhaps, some noses–I spent an entire lunch hour creating the perfect pair. Flawlessly clear frames with special feather-weight lenses, tinted just enough to make me look luminous. Invisible glasses. They cost $200.

Two years later and I am searching for the ideal librarian glasses. You know the type–severe black frames with heavy lenses so they slide down my nose just so. I picture myself looking businesslike and professional by day, then taking off the glasses, unleashing my hair from its coil at the nape of my neck, and letting it puddle around my shoulders in lustrous waves. My 9th-grade vixen awakened at last.

It’s a fantasy, of course, because the minute I remove the glasses, I would lose sight of the object of this little drama. He would be lost in a blurry sea.

But, you know, just once, I’d like to make that boy in 9th grade eat his heart out.

Ironically, the glasses I stepped on yesterday are brand new, lightweight and absolutely clear. Invisible glasses. The difference? They cost me $500.