For writer and broadcaster Adrian Chiles, a pair of spectacles has been a source of lifelong frustration and self-consciousness. In a candid reflection, he details a journey from teenage shame to the complex optical solutions of middle age, admitting that after all these years, he still hates wearing glasses.
The teenage torment of spectacles
Chiles was first told he needed glasses at the age of 14, a development he recalls with horror. For the teenage boy, they were a general source of shame and inconvenience. The football pitch became a blur, and he believes any fleeting interest from girls evaporated completely upon their arrival. The practical annoyances were immediate: glasses steaming up upon entering warm pubs in winter, hindering his already slim chances of being served underage, and their perpetual state of being bent out of shape.
"I could never figure out why this was," Chiles writes of the misaligned frames. "The left side was higher than the right, or the right higher than the left." Attempts to adjust them by pulling and bending the arms or the 'ear thingies' only made matters worse. He reserves particular disdain for the nose pads, which he says have never successfully stopped the glasses from sliding down his nose.
A brief respite with contact lenses
Contact lenses arrived like "knights in shining armour," offering a taste of freedom. While they couldn't undo the damage to his self-esteem inflicted by years in specs, they at least allowed him to see the ball on the football pitch clearly. Glasses were relegated to a last resort, only for use when a lens was lost or an eye infection struck. This period, however, was not to last.
The return to glasses and complex needs
The advent of bifocal requirements marked a turning point, as contact lenses became "less up to the task." This forced a grudging return to the hated spectacles. As his vision needs have grown more complex, so too have the optical remedies. Chiles now describes a daily routine of moving his head up, down, and side to side, searching for the "sweet spot" to bring objects into focus. This endeavour sometimes sees his head tracing circular or figure-of-eight patterns, a nervous tic he resignedly adds to his collection.
In a moment of defiance against correction, the shortsighted broadcaster sometimes goes for walks by the sea without any visual aids, attempting to "embrace the blurriness" as his authentic self. The experiment works only briefly before necessity forces the specs back on, bringing with them a pang of almost-gratitude mixed with enduring resentment.
Adrian Chiles's account is a relatable chronicle of the petty and profound irritations of impaired vision, a battle between the desire to see clearly and the annoyance of the tools required to do so. His conclusion is simple yet steadfast: the hatred for his glasses remains, a constant companion through the decades.
