This morning, I took my first trip on New Jersey’s PATH train, out to Hoboken, where my uncle Robert runs an optometry practice. A quick look at my glasses – whose super-glued right arm evidences their seven year age – reminded me I hadn’t had my eyes checked in three-quarters of a decade. So, Jersey-bound, I contemplated the possibility that I might actually be far blinder than my outdated, rather pansy prescription would otherwise indicate.

Fortunately, after much consideration of number one vs. number two random letter line readings, it seems my eyes are still pretty much exactly where they were before (a piddling -1.75 diopter), though with just a touch of newfound right eye astigmatism.

So, this morning, after forty-five minutes of letter line comparisons, I spent at least as long considering frame after frame after glasses frame. There are few accessories as omnipresent as a pair of glasses, and so I tried to balance out the demands of indie film cool with the need for something I could wear, day in and day out, for at least the next year or three.

The pince nez, therefore, fell by the wayside, as did a number of other options that seemed the optical equivalent of a joke that’s funny the first time, but gets painfully old when frequently retold. In the end, I settled on two frames, aiming to switch back and forth between them as whimsy might dictate: one slightly retro, the other a touch fashion-forward, though neither so bold as to become the first (or only) thing one might notice upon my entering a room.

Doubtless, the girl, my mother, and any other style-conscious female friends and family will disdain both choices. But, fortunately, as I can still glasses-less pass the driver’s license vision test, at very worst, I can always drop the glasses (and the faux-intellectual air they lend) entirely, and stumble through life only a short squint away from seeing things exactly as they are.