Image credit: Michelle Arseneault ()

1. You realize that if you grow a unibrow, no one will notice as long as you get the right frames.

2. Every two to three weeks, loved ones come up to you and say “you need to clean those.”

3. You discover you mildly hate people who wear fake glasses. Because know it wasn’t so long ago that having to wear glasses was a sign that you were a twat (see any Woody Allen film).

4. While driving on a cold day, you notice something feels like it’s burning the bridge of your nose. Then you discover the problem is your car’s heart is hitting your glasses’ frames.

5. You always around feeling that something’s slightly but definitely wrong with your face. Then you discover that one small bit on your glasses moved 3 millimeters.

6. To deal with damaged or worn glasses, you buy some tiny tools to repair them. When you use them, you feel one of two things:
   “Yeah, I can fix stuff. If I can handle something this small, there’s no stopping me."
   “I feel like an idiot. This thing’s so small and the tools are so tiny, it’s like operating on a chinchilla.”

7. You find you compare to yourself to celebrities with glasses whenever you pick a new pair.
   “Do I go for the Stephen Hawking look (smart, perhaps hard to relate to), the Harry Potter look (short, scruffy but friendly) or the David Mamet look (tough and eccentric)?"

8. You may find you need multiple pairs and have to switch from one to another, or buy a pair of bifocals. Either way, you suddenly feel old.

9. Should you decide to go with multiples pair, you may put one on your head while wearing the other. This gets you some strange looks.

10. You get accessories that you hope will look stylish but really make you look foolish.

This will help you understand some common accessories and the associations:
String holding glasses around your neck ("In my past life I was a middle-aged female receptionist.")
Clip-on Sunglasses ("I'm a tourist or an out-of-the-loop father. Perhaps both.")
Oversized Sunglasses ("I'm still waiting to play an extra in the next Matrix movie.")

These days, I go for the oversized sunglasses.

Article copyright 2018 by Gabriel Connor Salter. Feel free to share as long as you include proper attribution.