Thursday, January 21, 2010

Framed!

I acquired my specs when I was in my 8th grade. Forever the world around me got framed, a tad artificial. I used to wonder which was real. The faded hazy vision or the clearer framed one? I was not so petrified with my partial Hubble space look until an uncle exclaimed “che! Now all that glamour has gone”. Snap! Right between my eyes it snapped! The entire thrill of looking intellectual, mature, someone worth taking seriously, all that snuffed out!! But then I looked around, half my family were in glasses. So I was relieved that it runs in the family. In fact, I began to feel much better when I checked out some of my mom’s old photos, whew!! Those days’ people literally wore voluminous swimming goggles!
Inevitably that thought still keeps sneaking in… somehow I began to drift into that group of mousy bespectacled people, even my class benchie then on, turned out to be in glasses. It does creep into our attitude; somehow these glasses seem to encase your entire body attitude. You are not nearly so open, fun loving or funky when you are in glasses than when you are without them. And if you do happen to be kinky in spite of all that, you are applauded to such a point of exaggeration that it is more than enough to effectively make you sniggle back to your shell.
It is with a touch of dread, like a final spoiler to all the pains gone into looking good, getting the dress right, the hair right, and pointless though it is, the eyes lined with kohl, when I finally do don the specs. A friend of mine considered the possibility of doing all that after wearing the specs first. IT doesn’t work; somehow it dampens the spirit of vanity and verve with which we start out at adorning ourselves before going anywhere.
Try arguing with me that even spectacled people can look classy once they get the glasses of the right shape and design. I have despairingly tried one after the other, and those that do look classy….eham! Costs a bomb! I am often tempted to take that smart move, you know like my cousin does, to go out without them, and use them only when watching a movie or read a book. But whenever I try doing that , I feel a bit of a mean hypocrite, why if someone has to like me should like me as I am , specs and all!!
All the charming guys politely avoid you and soon those intellectual recluses become the apple of your eye. I don’t know what it is a sort of stigma attached to being a chash- mush, people wrongly assume you to be dorky or nerdish on the whole the boring type just at the sight of those confounded goggles! Just when you feel like emerging from a luxurious sedan with a fashionable élan, your glasses get all misty all of a sudden because of all that A.C and sudden warmth outside. By the time you remain frozen waiting for it to clear by itself or you clumsily fumble for the suitable cloth to clear it, you could have got robbed in broad daylight!!The same while you are sipping a coffee thoughtfully staring fixedly at some object, suddenly it all gets blotted out and for a moment you suffer from partial amnesia! Well all that a framed soul can say is that in life, things become clear when glasses become clear....