When I was in second grade, I got glasses. I loved them to the point that I was never seen without them, even though it was considered cool in my school to pretend as though you didn’t need glasses. Second grade girls being what they are, they told me that I looked better without my glasses, but I blew them off. That was my nature.


In third grade, people began to make jokes with more barbs on them. I was a catcher on a softball team, and let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to keep your glasses on when you throw your helmet off in an attempt to catch the ball. I told myself, when I got contacts, that I wasn’t doing it for my classmates; I was doing it for softball. The first few weeks were agony. Every dust particle in the room would find its way into my eye and under my contacts. My eyes were red all the time, but I was a stubborn child. I refused to go back to glasses. Besides, I told myself, everyone thinks you’re pretty now! To this day I’m not sure if they were being sarcastic about that or not.

In fourth grade, I got better at wearing contacts. I could poke my eye now, for Pete’s sake. A sliver of plastic wasn’t going to bother me that much. I began to get bruises under my eyes, though, from rubbing that I did to prevent the contacts from rolling into the back of my eyes, which is pretty painful, and annoying to boot. People began to ask me if I was getting enough sleep, which I thought was cool. I figured that it gave me a very hardcore look. The bruises often made my eyes look as though I had been wearing mascara and decided to jump in water. I wore them anyway, because nobody else in my class wore glasses.

This went on until the end of sixth grade. People always looked at me with concern when I began to rub at my eyes. My best friend, for one, found it highly disturbing when I stuck a contact in after a sleepover.
“You do realize you’re putting a foreign object in your eye?” she would ask me, looking slightly sickened.
“Got to do something to see,” was my response.
“Lord, girly, wear your glasses! That’s what they’re for!”
“I look stupid in glasses. End of discussion.”

The entire summer my contacts were a hindrance to me. My eyes were perpetually red and bruised. It hurt too much to even put the stupid contacts in some days. Finally, I gave up.
“Forget contacts!” I proclaimed. “I’ll live without.”

Now in eighth grade, thanks to the internet, I have a pair of glasses for every day of the week. Some of my friends try to guess what I’ll be wearing to certain occasions. My friends and I are going to an amusement park soon, and I figured Rollercoasters + Glasses= Not so good. I took out a pair of unused contacts.
What do you know? I couldn’t even get them to stay in.