Source: http://www.theawl.com/2015/09/why-i-hate...

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1992 was a big year for me, and not just because I saw Ministry and Ice Cube at Lollapalooza. I was in tenth grade, and my parents finally deemed me “responsible” enough for contact lenses. I was fitted with expensive, non-disposable gas-permeable hard contact lenses. They cost like a hundred dollars a pair, and if I lost one, I had to wait at least a week for a replacement. Of course my parents bought me two pairs, but they flew out of my eyes on roller coasters, were easy to accidentally bite in half when I put them in my mouth to clean them off, and they were nearly impossible to find if I dropped one. They were so tiny and fragile, I was chewing through a pair every month or two. But they were also life-changing. For the first time since that first time at the optometrist’s office in second grade, I could see EVERYTHING. It was amazing, how much detail I’d missed out on! Never again would I make the mistake of wearing glasses when the contact lens option was present, I thought.

“It’s true,” the optometrist said to me in 2008, “that contact lenses would give you more clarity.” I agreed. After months of breaking my own rule never to wear glasses, I was done. I decided I should get some contact lenses, immediately. “Would you like to try soft contact lenses, instead? The vision won’t be quite as good as the hard lenses, but it will be much better than your glasses.” Yes, yes I would like to try them. And it turned out they were just fine.

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