Island Life by David Slack

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Island Life: Staring into space

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  • andrew llewellyn,

    If all else fails... the eyesight test when getting your driver's license will catch any problems.

    Probably too late for academic purposes though.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    I'm not sure how blind you have to be to get picked up by the vision testing they do in schools and kindies, but my boy had been through it three times before we called 'screw it' and took him to an optometrist. Short-sighted and astigmatism, just like Mum.

    The basic costs of my daughter's hearing impairment are covered until she leaves high school - like dentistry. My son's vision impairment is down to us.

    He is a nerdy swot though, so that stereotype's still bearing out.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    Mum does, vividly and often, and unduly reproves herself. She was an exemplary mother.... But it wasn't until I told her that I couldn't read the school blackboard unless I was sitting right at the front that the penny dropped.

    Snap! That was my situation exactly. My mother can still make herself feel guilty about not picking up my short-sightedness until I was ten years old. She is awfully silly about this issue. Sweet, but silly.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Brislen,

    My own mother still despairs at discovering I couldn't see the blackboard at age 13... Years of guilt have followed, not all of it my fault.

    Must get the girls' eyes tested regularly.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 200 posts Report Reply

  • Raymond A Francis,

    Been there, done that.
    I do have to say that while sitting in the darkness with the optometrist intensivily asking me questions I have to strongly quell a disire to lie, not sure why this is and it is (I claim) uncharacteristic
    I do agree about the childhood testing not picking up children and how poor eye sight can interfer with education, the test needs to be more rigorous

    You might point out to your daughter that girls who wear glasses are so much better looking, my wife(who naturally wears glasses) says it is because they tend to magnify the eye which is of course the enterance to the soul

    45' South • Since Nov 2006 • 578 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    it is because they tend to magnify the eye

    Not if you're short-sighted, unfortunately - they make the eyes look smaller. There's also the terrific 'different prescriptions for each eye' problem, where one eye looks as though it's smaller than the other.

    Also, I urge glasses-wearers: do not ever pay an optometrist for full-priced ripoff frames again (apologies to any reading optometrists, but seriously, your prices are insane). Go and get your prescription from a professional, try on some frames in their offices to work out the shape you like, and then head to zennioptical.com or goggles4u.com. Pre-internet: $600 glasses. Post-internet: $30 glasses. *Delivered*.

    (Hrm. Maybe that should be in the 'tips' thread.)

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Annabel McAleer,

    The Plunket nurse told my mum I might be blind, when I was just three. So it was quite a relief when it turned out that I only needed glasses. Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather than being enormous green blobby things that turned into pretty trees with leaves only when you got up really close to them.

    Auckland • Since May 2007 • 4 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather than being enormous green blobby things that turned into pretty trees with leaves only when you got up really close to them.

    Heh - after a history not so unlike that of David's daughter & Emma's son, a few years ago I failed my driver's license test even with my glasses on. I had cataracts it turned out, which were duly removed - and I cannot express in words the astonishment at how different the world seemed - ohmigod, the colours! The clarity!

    I had no idea I even had a problem - and I spent a month with one eye "cured" while the other seemed like I was peering through a gauze curtain (a curiously nauseating effect).

    So anyway, in the space of a month I went from shortsighted & astigmatic, to ridiculously long sighted. Thank goodness for $2 shop reading specs.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time

    Seriously, you people are channelling my life or something.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I cannot express in words the astonishment at how different the world seemed - ohmigod, the colours! The clarity!

    I'm going the other way these days. I'm the only member of the family without spectacles, but I have to get everyone else to read the small print on things.

    Those reading glasses I never really needed get more use these days ...

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Shep Cheyenne,

    Thanks Danielle I'll check them out.

    Big thanks has to go to Hary Potter for making glasses cool for kids.

    Since Oct 2007 • 927 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Big thanks has to go to Hary Potter for making glasses cool for kids.

    Let's hope no-one remakes Joe 90.

    And that raises a question - if Harry's so goddamn magic, how come he needs spectacles?

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather than being enormous green blobby things that turned into pretty trees with leaves only when you got up really close to them.

    Yep, trees are the thing. I stopped wearing my glasses all through high school and went back to them at uni. (More than two choices of frame! Frames that don't look appalling!) Correcting the astigmatism was scary. Walking up stairs or pouring boiling water into a mug became exciting adventures in pain.

    Big thanks has to go to Hary Potter for making glasses cool for kids.

    And Daniel Vettori.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • George Darroch,

    All of this reminds me of the work that the Hollows Foundation do. Theirs seems a particularly noble and practical cause.

    WLG • Since Nov 2006 • 2264 posts Report Reply

  • Josh Addison,

    I think the "leaves on trees" thing is pretty much universal -- it was one of the first things I commented on when I got glasses at 18 (having first noticed my eyesight getting dodgy at around 16). And as soon as I made the observation, I was told that my uncle had said the exact same thing when he got glasses...

    Both my mother and one of my brothers got glasses at a young age (in my brother, it motivated him to go into optometry). Mum went to contacts, and watching her poke herself in the eye every morning for years convinced me to stick with the glasses. My brother, on the other hand, had issues with Roacutaine and an air-conditioned office, which combined to make his eyeballs to dry for lenses. Weird.

    Onehunga, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 298 posts Report Reply

  • Evan Yates,

    I got my first glasses at age 5, which immediately put and end to my career dream of being an airforce fighter pilot. Luckily, Aunty Helen removed any painful reminders of my lost dream some years later.

    Mum told me, as I was a pre-schooler, the indicator for her was not the blackboard, but the preferred close viewing position to our (old B&W) TV.

    I now find I am constantly giving my children ( 5 and 7 ) surreptitious ad-hoc vision tests. "What does that sign at the end of the street say?", "What type of airplane is that?". So far they show no signs of my defective eyesight gene. Time will tell.

    Hamiltron, Te Ika-a-Māui • Since Nov 2006 • 197 posts Report Reply

  • Grant McDougall,

    But it wasn't until I told her that I couldn't read the school blackboard unless I was sitting right at the front that the penny dropped...We also learn from the report that being short-sighted tends to yield average or above average academic performance. That may well be so but I can testify that it does sweet bugger-all for your performance on a football field.

    This was how it came to be recognised that I needed glasses, too. Way back in 1977, as a Standard 2 pupil at Managapapa School in Gisborne, the teacher, Ted Beets*, realised that I was having trouble reading the blackboard. He recommended to my parents that I get my eyes checked and, sure as eggs, it was discovered that I was short-sighted. I've been wearing glasses every since, apart from a disastrous go at contacts in the late '80s, which caused my eyes no end of irritation.

    David's right about playing rugby with poor eye-sight. You had to really concentrate to see the ball, catch it, etc. When I did get glasses, I'd often accidentally break them. It was the bane of my parents' live, regularly paying-up for glasses repairs. I should've known better, but I was only at primary school.

    *An amazing old bloke, a real, old-fashioned Kiwi bloke with red hair and bright yellow, tobacco-stained fingers. Each morning, just before morning break, he'd pick a pupil, give them a couple of dollars and instruct them to go to the dairy across the road "and get me The Dominion and a packet of Park Drive". A teacher getting a kid to buy tobacco for them!! Christ, you'd be suspended for doing that these days.

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2006 • 760 posts Report Reply

  • Kebabette,

    Oh yes this brings back memories. I wasn't discovered until I was 8 and the optometrists were amazed I'd managed till then. It explained the rather fetching wrinkled up nose that featured in so many photos of me as a little 'un - clearly I was squinting to try and bloody see anything.

    Your daughter's lucky that the glasses around now are waaaay cooler. I have a history of the shitest glasses around - the Deidre Barlows, the octagonal gold ones that made me look like Dr Crippen (and we're unfortunately smashed when I was doing gymnastics).

    Ironically now that I have contacts, I have the best glasses of my life - sexy little cats eye librarian frames from Groovy Glasses in Christchurch.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 221 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Lots of things in that story remind me of how I got my glasses. I got them in standard 3, so 9, but like your one I was reading in bad light from an earlier age. In my instance I used to sleep with the door open and a hall light on outside the room. I used to lean over the edge of the bed and read with the book on the floor with the dim light from several metres away. If anyone came into the hallway I'd just put my head back on my pillow in a flash and pretend to be asleep.

    I had the same ugly glasses from when I was 9 until about 15. Ghastly grey plastic ones. I'm eternally unhappy with my glasses frames. I gave contacts a serious go and found that my eyes were too sensitive. I could wear them, but couldn't put them in or out.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    Ah yes...primer 3, when I was shouted at for being stupid (because I couldnt see the blackboard)despite the fact that I had gone to school already a reader...the glasses were horrible but wonderfully life-enhancing - ooo look! That's what hills are!There's hills around Christchurch!!And light comes from lightbulbs!!! (Well hey, I wasnt 7...)

    Many decades later. I praise contact lenses - my mother got them for me when I was 12 & at high school (because the glasses really were
    astoundingly ugly (with my degree of myopia you need really thick lenses)). My sight is distinctly imperfect but I can still drive -and my mother still recalls my delight at being able to catch things thrown to me...

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • James Green,

    Go and get your prescription from a professional, try on some frames in their offices to work out the shape you like, and then head to zennioptical.com or goggles4u.com. Pre-internet: $600 glasses. Post-internet: $30 glasses. *Delivered*.

    You find this works out? I got a fab pair of glasses in Hong Kong, but I was never quite sure that they were as sorted as from an NZ optomestrist.

    On the trees thing, I used to describe being short sighted as like living in a cartoon. But perhaps a Roger Rabbit-esque one, with real people. Only the things that were real were the things that were close, and all the background was cartoon.

    Limerick, Ireland • Since Nov 2006 • 703 posts Report Reply

  • Kebabette,

    I gave contacts a serious go and found that my eyes were too sensitive. I could wear them, but couldn't put them in or out.

    I sympathise, I didn't like the 'poking in your eye' aspect of lenses, now I can pretty much do it with my eyes closed (ahem). My eyes flicked and I flinched so much the first time trying contacts that the (male) optometrist said "you're nearly as bad as a man".

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 221 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    You find this works out? I got a fab pair of glasses in Hong Kong, but I was never quite sure that they were as sorted as from an NZ optomestrist.

    I've bought four pairs of glasses online and all of them are as good as any I've ever had. Of course, I'm a small-plastic-frames person, retro-librarian-styles, so I don't have any issues with nose-fit or weight or any complicated stuff like that. Plus if they don't work out, you spent $30. No biggie.

    You know, Kebabette, I'm thinking the Deirdre Barlows may make a comeback! I might spend $30 on a pair and frizz out my hair and see if I can become the femme fatale of my street. Heh.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Susan Snowdon,

    My license was endorsed so I have to drive a car with 'external wing mirrors'. (I think that cancels out anything pre-1920) Anyway, after I failed the test it only took two days before I wiped one of them off on a parked car. Bugger...

    Since Mar 2008 • 110 posts Report Reply

  • Kebabette,

    You're on to it Danielle, check out American Apparel's vintage eyewear or the ones on the header. Geek chic a go go.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 221 posts Report Reply

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