Why I Prefer Glasses
(To Contacts)
Spencer Di Scala
(For the Glasser project)
Throughout my life, I have preferred eyeglasses to contacts. I was not quite sure why until I thought about it lately. Perhaps it was because when I started wearing glasses, contact lenses did not exist, so far as I know, or because I have astigmatism to such a bad extent that contacts did not work for me the one time I tried them at my wife’s insistence. Fundamentally, I think it is because I have an aversion to sticking my fingers into my eyes, which—for some reason I will never understand—my wife does not have. Or perhaps I now think that glasses make a cool fashion statement, something that I would never have believed when I was young. Whatever the reason for my strong aversion to contacts, however, there was an event that confirmed my antipathy for them and allowed my preference for eyeglasses to remain supreme.
About fifteen years ago, my ophthalmologist referred me to Mass Eye and Ear to check with a specialist because he saw a spot that he believed might be cancer of the eye. Naturally I was worried about this possibility. I immediately made an appointment with the doctor he referred me to. His office told me to bring someone to drive me home because my eyes would be dilated and I would not be able to drive afterwards. My wife came with me to drive me home.
When I saw the doctor, it took him about 15 seconds to determine that the spot was not cancer—and he did not have to dilate my eyes. My wife and I were very happy as we walked back to the car during a cold, windy day, chatting about how lucky we had been. In the garage our car was parked outside. When we pulled open a creaky old iron door to get to the car a gust of wind blew caught us. My wife let out a scream of pain and covered her eyes. The pain was so severe in one of her eyes that we had to turn around to run back to the doctor’s office hoping to reach it before it closed.
To make a long story short, she was wearing hard contact lenses and the wind carried a speck of dirt into her right eye that got lodged under the lens and scratched her cornea. She had to undergo an examination, came out of the office wearing an eye patch. It was lucky I was there because I had to drive her home.
I know that now there are soft lenses, and wind-blown particles get under them much less than they used to—if ever. I know that there are new kinds of lenses that correct astigmatism. I know that they are much more comfortable. But try as they may, no one has been able to convince me to try wearing contact lenses again!