What Happens When You Lose Your Glasses or When They Break

Unfortunately, for the second time this year, my glasses broke. The first time was due to age and brittle plastic, and the second was the result of a manufacturing defect in my new frames. I only had them for two months. Breaking your glasses isn’t just an accident, but a cosmic event specifically designed by the Master of Antics to make you realize how pathetic your dependence is on two small, easily snapped pieces of plastic and glass.

It always happens the same way, and it’s never a cool story. It’s not like you are fighting a shark or saving a person from a burning building. It always happens at the stupidest and worst possible scenario. You end up leaning over to pick up a sock, and you end up becoming confused about whether it is a sock or a cat. Your depth perception is gone instantly.

This problem has two main causes. The first one is the snooze button smash when you wake up in a panic and blindly flail your arms across your nightstand, and you hear an awful little crunch sound of $400 leaving your bank account. You didn’t have your morning coffee yet and your day has already become a monetary disaster. The second cause is an absolute classic: the butt sit. You take them off for a second to wipe sweat, clean smudges or sebum (facial oil), and then you place them carefully on the edge of your couch. You end up forgetting and once you sit down, you feel that distinctive unmistakable pleasure of the bridge of your nose snapping.

That’s just the start of what would be a hypothetical YKWBS episode. The next part is dealing with the optometry industrial complex. The first part is being forced out of work and into the eye doctor or Visionworks and you are immediately hit with four layers of optical extortion. The first one is the frame. Why are most pieces of stamped metal and cheap plastic selling for over $250!? It’s because they have a dead Italian designer’s name stamped on the side. It’s the same frame that broke when you sat on it, but now it’s high fashion. The second is the lens. If you have a strong prescription, you’ll end up paying another $150 for the High Index Thin Lens upgrade. You’re not just buying glass; you’re buying its absence so your eyes don’t look like two marbles at the bottom of a bottle.

And that’s only the first half of it. The second is even worse. The third layer is anti-glare, anti-scratch, and blue light filter. These are basically the DLC (downloadable content) of eyesight. They tell you your standard lens is subpar, reflecting light and being vulnerable to dust. If you accept the fear-mongering, you’ll end up taking the Seeing Clearly package for $75. The last one and the worst of all, the wait times. Most of them will end up being ready in 7 to 10 business days. That’s roughly one to two full weeks. You’re functionally blind during that time and most of it will be spent looking at the world like a Monet painting. Everything will be soft, beautiful, and completely ineligible. You can’t drive or read fine print. You’ll be staring into your phone trying to discern if that’s a text from your boss or a smudge of dirt.

Although some stores do, most of them don’t sell emergency pairs at the register. You’re just slapped with a simple, ugly, wire-frame pair that congratulates you for being able to see traffic lights again and then being taunted by waiting a week. So, what do you do during that blurry week? You’re stuck with having to have one side held together with a paperclip and the other wrapped in electrical tape, giving you a permanent throbbing headache. You look like a scientist who just escaped an explosion at the lab. You walk around hoping nobody notices you’re holding your face together with office supplies.

In short, they can be BS. The most common reason people get glasses is because of myopia, which I unfortunately have and runs in my family. I’m not willing to go through the hellish process known as LASIK to restore my vision to what it was during my younger years. Breaking your glasses becomes an expensive, embarrassing, and totally preventable reminder that your vision is now tied to the structural integrity of a piece of equipment that is less durable than a plastic toy. Once you get that new pair, put them in the case or better yet – weld them to your face.