SUNGLASSES

I've worn glasses almost all my life, discovering when I was ten years old that I was badly near-sighted. It was a shock to my mom because I am the youngest of four children, and no one else in our family had ever worn glasses. I remember the day we came out of the optometrist's office with my first pair of glasses and I looked up at a tree, seeing actual leaves for the first time. I told Mom how exciting it was, but that wasn't what she wanted to hear. She felt badly for not having found out earlier. She felt guilty. Moms.

For thirty-three years now I have bought all of my glasses in Asia. In Hong Kong, in Taipei, in Bangkok, one pair after another, I have been luckily enough to buy all my glasses here. First of all, they are WAY cheaper. And second of all, they are way better. Over the years I have had several friends who became optometrists in North America, and they have always told me that glasses cut in Asia are simply cut better. Some of it apparently has to do with government
regulation, or lack of government regulations. But they have been good glasses.

Or up until recently. Here in Thailand a chain of optometrists – called Top Charoen - started buying out the smaller "mom and pop" stores, and now they have bought out so many that in some towns Top Charoen is the only available option (like here in Prasat, where I live). Top Charoen stores look fancy. They have glass, mirrors, and halogen lights everywhere, and young women "clerks" all dressed in tight-fitting white dresses. One or two might know how to do an eye exam, but then the order is shipped off to Bangkok. No one in the shop is actually cutting the glasses. In Bangkok there are still a few of the older shops around (Petchaburi Road, near Soi 11), but they are rapidily disappearing.

All to say that for the last three years I have gone through one miserable pair of glasses after another, compounded by now needing reading glasses as well. I must have at least ten pairs, and none of them right. One day recently I looked in an old bag of toiletries and there I saw some way-out-of-date contact lenses, and I thought, hmm, might as well try. So I bought some solution and one day put them in. And they work! I can see! I still need reading glasses, and for several different strengths (the tiny Thai writing in my dictionary needs one strength, the computer screen another), but I can see.

And best of all. Now I can wear dark brown sunglasses, Ray Ban immitations! Two dollars a pair…. And every afternoon I can look up at big white beautiful cumulus clouds, rainy season clouds.