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<\/a>limitless.\u00a0 In my mind the look I was going for was retro, with dark frames on top, and no frame on the bottom.\u00a0 Think Vince Lombardi, Malcolm X, or perhaps your grade school nurse or science teacher.\u00a0 I think that the statement I wanted to make was that I was not into fashion – although my wardrobe alone would make this painfully obvious – but that I also was not willing to follow the crowd and buy either traditional tortoise shell frames or wire rim frames.\u00a0 I wanted to create a look of funky anti-fashion timelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0But clearly, such an important decision should not be made in isolation.\u00a0 An occasional disastrous clothing purchase can be rectified by quietly storing the offending item at the back of the closet, but with glasses you must live with your mistake – it essentially staresback at you in the mirror every morning.\u00a0 So I headed off to Pearle Vision in the company of my husband and Andrea, a very fashion conscious work colleague.\u00a0 Immediately the challenge became even more formidable.\u00a0 First, Malcolm X type glasses apparently did not exist, and the prices for frames were truly astonishing.\u00a0 One pair consisted of a small piece of plastic for the bridge of the nose – coming in various bright colors – and skinny plastic arms.\u00a0 The most substantial component of these $200 frames appeared to be the lenses, but of course the lenses were just props and were there just for show – real lenses were at least another $100.\u00a0 So your $200 purchase essentially bought you three small pieces of plastic, which in materials probably would cost no more than $5.\u00a0 The profit margins on glasses must be extraordinary.\u00a0 No wonder it seems that both designers and non designers license glasses, from Ralph Lauren to Sophia Loren.\u00a0 And no wonder people generally only buy one set of frames – with the exception of the glitterati, such as Elton John.<\/p>\n
It was clear that Nick and Andrea had not warmed up to my description of a funky retro look and were lobbying hard for a pair of tortoise shell glasses, whose only distinction was a small hint of blue amongst the brown hues.\u00a0 This did not meet my specifications at all.\u00a0 I think that this is probably the only time that I have consciously succumbed to peer pressure, and I left the store with the glasses on order.\u00a0 When they arrived, they vastly improved my vision, but that seemed to be beside the point.\u00a0 I had disappointed myself, and found that I did not really absolutely need to wear glasses, as this monocular vision thing seemed to be adequate.\u00a0 I never wore the glasses and eventually they got lost in the shuffle.<\/p>\n
About two years later I went on another glasses expedition with my brother Tim.\u00a0 He had said that he knew of a great glasses shop in Chicago and that he had successfully helped others refine their image through their frames.\u00a0 One great thing about Tim is that he is not afraid to spend money.\u00a0 He absolutely nixed the notion that you need to limit yourself to one pair of frames.\u00a0 If you consider the amount of clothing that you buy every year, and the fact that much doesn\u2019t really fit, can only be worn in certain seasons, or is just a mistake, the purchase of more than one set of frames does not seem out of line.\u00a0 He was absolutely correct, and I felt liberated.\u00a0 Additionally, at this point, I did want to have reading glasses, so now I was in the market for three pairs of glasses – one reading, one distance and one for variety.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first stop was the Visual Effects shop in the Clyborn Corridor.\u00a0 Again, my funky retro glasses did not seem to exist, and the prices were exorbitant, but I dug in.\u00a0 The first thing that I noticed is that when you buy glasses you spend a huge amount of time looking at yourself dead on in the mirror.\u00a0 Virtually all my clothes are purchased from a catalog, and I just don\u2019t spend that much time in front of the mirror in careful scrutiny.\u00a0 Therefore, it is somewhat ironic that I was looking for glasses to make a statement that I would essentially rarely see.\u00a0 And I began to notice details for the first time.\u00a0 Hmm, I could use a little Botox between the eyes to address the \u201cchapter 11\u201d wrinkle, my mouth seems to be exceptionally small (I subsequently measured it at 2 inches) and my ear lobes could be trimmed down.\u00a0 Despite these distractions, I managed to leave the store with two pairs of glasses, one that approached (but did not meet) my ideal in that they did indeed remind me of my grade school nurse Mrs. Easton.\u00a0 The next store was a high priced boutique on Michigan Avenue, but the dam had been burst and I was ready to lay down some serious money.\u00a0 I immediately glommed on to a pair of brightish blue frames, which strayed from my original strategy of anti-fashion timelessness, but I was on a roll.<\/p>\n
Now of course I had my glasses, unfettered by peer pressure, glasses that were mine alone, but I frankly I did not feel confident enough to wear them.\u00a0 I occasionally used the reading glasses when I could remember where I put them, and used the others only for driving or watching movies. While glasses for driving would ostensibly make me a safer driver, it probably had the opposite effect, as I constantly sneaked peaks at myself in the rear view mirror, wondering if I had made the correct choice.<\/p>\n
While I wore these glasses on and off for several years, I still clung to my original plan.\u00a0 There were ample examples of just the glasses that I was looking for in news reels and period movies.\u00a0 The movie \u201cQuiz Show\u201d relives the scandal of the 64,000 Question game show that occurred in the early sixties.\u00a0 In one scene, the camera pans the studio audience, and I swear about every third woman was wearing my ideal glasses.\u00a0 I can imagine the propmaster given the task of outfitting the audience.\u00a0 Again, this is before contact lenses, so I imagine somebody somewhere had calculated the percentage of<\/p>\n
Americans who wore glasses and the styles available.\u00a0 In a more recent movie, \u201cCatch Me if You Can,\u201d Tom Hanks plays a 60s FBI agent who is tracking down a teenage check kiter.\u00a0 Again, the perfect glasses.\u00a0 When the movie skips a few years, the I also further investigated my theory that glasses more accurately reflected a personality than clothing by complimenting people on their glasses.\u00a0 This generally had an extremely positive effect; random strangers were also immensely pleased at the recognition, more so than if you said, \u201cNice hat,\u201d or \u201cNice shoes.\u201d\u00a0 If I truly liked the glasses I would always ask where they bought them, which further bolstered the initial compliment.\u00a0 I was visiting relatives in Northeast Vermont, which is home to an impressive collection of creative people, including craftspeople, artists, performers, all of whom seem delight in the offbeat.\u00a0 We were attending a performance of the Bread and Puppet Circus, which was presented in a field with a variety of different acts going on.\u00a0 At one point, I was sitting next to a young women with incredibly long armpit hair, a pungent lived-in odor and a great pair of glasses.\u00a0 As we watched the performers waft through the adjacent woods wearing oversized masks, I nudged the woman and said, \u201cI really like your glasses, where did you get them?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 She looked at me with an appreciative smile and said, \u201cYes, aren\u2019t these great, last year I found them in the field.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This past spring I participated in a bird banding project, which consisted of getting up really early in the morning, setting up nets in the woods, and then waiting for birds to get tangled in the nets.\u00a0 We would then fan out, check each net, laboriously extract the bird from the net, and then return to the central station where the bird would be weighed, measured, banded and then set free.\u00a0 I was stationed at one net with my feet deep in the spring muck and trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to remove a small blue winged warbler, who was flapping and squawking and generally making life difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 My neighbor at the net was an older man, who was struggling with a northern waterthrush.\u00a0 When I looked up to ask him for help, I noticed he was wearing the perfect glasses.\u00a0\u00a0 I said, \u201cBoy these birds are a nightmare.\u00a0 But by the way, were did you get your glasses?\u201d\u00a0 He replied, \u201cYes, I can\u2019t seem to get this net off the wing.\u00a0 You won\u2019t believe it, but I have had these glasses for over 35 years.\u00a0 I got them when I was in college in 1965!\u201d<\/p>\n I was astonished.\u00a0 Here was a man who was so comfortable with his image that he had not seen the need to change his glasses, through the hippy days of the 60s, the disco craze of the 70s, the me decade of the 90s, and whatever it was we were living through now.\u00a0 And I think that through all these decades, these glasses would never have been thought of as fashionable – looking nerdy in the 60s and retro for the next three decades.\u00a0 Perfect.\u00a0 This man was my role model.\u00a0 I asked him, \u201cI don\u2019t suppose you know where you got them?\u201d\u00a0 This seemed to be the stupidest of questions, since it seemed improbable that any store would carry the same glasses for almost 40 years.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWell all I know is that they are called Shuron.\u201d<\/p>\n When the birdbanding was over – at 7:30 AM – I rushed home and typed in \u201cShuron\u201d to Google, and sure enough the company still existed and still sold the same model for the relative bargain of $100.\u00a0 I was in orbit.\u00a0 I quickly ordered a pair and excitedly thought that quest for perfect glasses was finally coming to fruition.\u00a0 They arrived and with great anticipation I put them.\u00a0 And though I was filled with pent up desire and dreams of making the perfect statement, there was no way around it – they looked AWFUL.\u00a0 Far from funky, they were just plain unattractive and distracting and just all wrong.\u00a0 My carefully crafted self image, one that I had held on to for over 10 years just went up in smoke.\u00a0 It was a painful moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once I had assimilated my disappointment Plan B was relatively simple.\u00a0 I no longer looked to glasses as a vehicle for self definition, but just wanted something serviceable.\u00a0 I also realized that I had developed a nasty habit of losing glasses, so that of the 4 pairs I had originally purchased, none remained and once again I trudged off to the glasses store with a heavy heart.\u00a0 I picked out nothing special, but nonetheless $170 of nothing special, and wandered around the store while the clerk was writing the receipt up.\u00a0 Off in the corner I spied a dusty old pair that had a certain timeless dignity about them.\u00a0 \u201cHow much are these?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 \u201cOh you don\u2019t want them,\u201d the clerk answered, \u201cthey are reading glasses.\u201d\u00a0 I realized that I could take the standard reading lenses out of them and put in my prescription lenses, so I pressed ahead, \u201cHow much are they?\u201d\u00a0 To my astonishment and delight the clerk said, \u201cThose are eight bucks.\u201d\u00a0 And while the style was maybe not perfect, the statement that I was saying, at least to myself, was at least I did not get suckered into buying another overpriced pair of frames.\u00a0 Perfect.<\/p>\n \u00a0Are their parts of your personality that are ——-<\/p>\n \u00a0Or maybe your self image could use a bit of retooling?<\/p>\n \u00a0But if a complete makeover is ——- you,<\/p>\n \u00a0I have a solution for a sure fire switcheroo<\/p>\n \u00a0——- yourself and buy new glasses to make people aware<\/p>\n \u00a0That you can hip, chic or square depending on the pair.<\/p>\n \u00a0*<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Answer: dueling, eluding, indulge<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to wear glasses.\u00a0 I grew up before contact lenses or LASIK surgery became available, and to me anybody who wore glasses was immediately unique.\u00a0 How many times did I sit at … Continue reading <\/a> costumer needed to make Tom Hanks look a bit older, so when Tom reappears he has traded in the perfect frames for a pair of wire rims.\u00a0 I have noticed that this is a standard movie tactic, i.e. to portray the passage of time, glasses frames are changed or a beard is grown or shaved off.<\/a><\/p>\nThe missing words in the following poem are a set of anagrams (like spot, stop, post) and the number of dashes indicate the number of letters.\u00a0 One of the anagrams will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for answers.<\/h6>\n
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