Many of us who are parents love to celebrate our baby’s firsts. Their first tooth, first words, first steps, and other firsts are ways we celebrate their growth and progress through life. Then we celebrate more firsts as they grow. Their first day of school, first date, first car. Some of these firsts can be bittersweet, as they also represent their growing independence. As we get older though, firsts don’t really feel like a celebration. First pap smear – annoying and uncomfortable. First mammogram – ouch! Those girls aren’t meant to be flat. First pair of bifocals – so complicated. However, those trips to the eye doctor are a part of life I think we all understand.

My routine trip to the eye doctor starts when they call me back. First there’s a room with weird-looking torture devices. There are machines with chin trays and forehead straps. Some have circles for you to press your face against. There are eyeballs everywhere. Decorative ones, diagrams, anatomical models, and even a map of what the inside of the eye looks like. They have you sit at each of these machines in turn and put each eye up to it. First you stare at a hot air balloon at the end of a road. It’s blurry. My eyes try to focus, but it’s not me, it’s the image. They control when it comes into focus. My eyes are like, are you kidding me? I’m trying hard but this game is rigged. Then the next machine they have me put my eye up to it and tell me to hold it open. Then they blow a puff of air at it. I flinch back. Here it is open and they attack it with a puff of air! Relatively speaking though, that was the easy one.

The next machine is the worst of all. Not to mention it costs extra! I pay it though because it replaces the dreaded light that the doctor shines in your eyes. Instinctively when someone shines a bright light into my eyes, they close. It’s a defense mechanism. Eye tests are all about forcing your eyes to override these defense mechanisms. Eyelids close to protect your eyes, but we must force them to stay open and just take it. This last machine takes a picture of the back of the eye so the doctor can study that instead of shining a light in there for so long. Sounds wonderful to me at first. The catch is that the picture is taken by shining a bright light at each eye for several seconds. If the eyelids close (like they’re supposed to do), the test fails and you have to try again. Needless to say the odds of success decrease with each subsequent try. For my part, each time the technician says, “just one more time”, I know it’s just to make both of us feel better. The odds of it being true are slim. Eventually we get a good-enough picture and she leads me into the next room. She leaves me there and probably goes out to scream into the wind or do something else to release her frustration. Honestly, I don’t blame her at all. She kept her composure while I was there, even though the cracks were starting to show, for both of us.

The next room is where you see the doctor. The light is dim, which is much appreciated after that torture room. If they would just light a few candles and put on some nature sounds, this could be a spa. That would be lovely right now as a way to recover from the torture room, but alas it’s not meant to be. This is the comparison room. You have to compare lots and lots of letters. Do they look better on a red or green background, um, they look the same. Which lines are darker, vertical or horizontal? They’re so blurry. Then the lens machine comes out. Do you like 1 or 2? 1 or 2? Sometimes there’s a clear preference, but sometimes they’re both equally awful, just in different ways. My answer changes with every blink. My eyes are exhausted by this point. They are trying to self-soothe after all that bright light with blinking and tears. However the pressure is on because the result will be my glasses and there are a few hundred dollars riding on my answers.

Bifocals mean that the answers to all these questions about what looks clearer change depending on where you are looking. Progressives are bifocals where the transition between the two is gradual instead of all at once. “Transitions” are something different though. That term refers to the lens darkening in response to UV light. Since “progressive” and “transition” are synonyms in regular language though, I am forever getting these terms confused. For progressives, it matters which part of the lens you look out of and where the transition happens in relation to where your eye is. The size of the lens affects it too. This has been a steep learning curve for me, but hopefully when my glasses are ready, the transition will be clear. Until I need tinted lenses, that is.