four-eyes — may 14 (day 14)

I remember the day I realized I had bad vision. I was riding the school bus, sitting in a seat with Theresa Vega, when I commandeered her glasses and looked out the window only to see detailed trees in the distance. I'd never seen anything on the horizon with that much clarity before. Where I'd grown accustomed to assuming trees in the distance were meant to be nebulous blobs of green, I suddenly realized that with the right assistance, I could make out leaves and branches.

It was a pivotal moment. I told my parents all about my revelation and straightaway they got me into some hideous-looking frames (that I picked out, naturally) that were roughly the color of bloody vomit and as large as coasters.

I got contacts in middle school and proceeded to never take them out and clean them, resulting in awesome allergic reactions to my own eye protein.

These days I alternate between the contacts and the glasses (which are several new prescriptions old, meaning I really shouldn't wear them while driving ... but I do), and I have an annoying habit of always trying to one-up people by bragging about how bad my eyesight is. I tend to do this a lot while drunk. I only know a couple of people with worse eyes than I have.

I am competitive, even when it comes to relative uselessness of my eyeballs. Sad but true.

(-7.00 both eyes — though the left is slightly more nearsighted than the right — and getting worse every year!)