Snapped

One morning last week, I knocked my glasses off the night table as I fumbled for them in the early morning hours.  They’ve hit the floor a couple of times with no obvious damage, but the noise I heard this time just sounded bad.

I assumed a cracked lens or some such, but when I turned on the light to assess the damage, I found that my instead of glasses, I now had two monocles.  The plastic bridge snapped almost right in the middle.

Seven years ago, when I switched from full-time contacts to mostly full-time glasses (something that seemed unthinkable when I was finally allowed to get contacts at age twelve), I picked out a nice pair of frames and high quality lenses.  I remember questioning the durability of a plastic frame (versus metal, which was all I’d had previously) at the time, but I really wasn’t seeing anything I liked in the metal frames, and the molded plastic seemed very comfortable.

Granted I’ve been fairly careful with them (never leaving them in the car, almost always on my face or in a very safe place), but I really was pleased with how well they’d held up as the years passed.

When I bought a nice new pair of glasses with metal frames three years ago, I stuck with the old faithful plastic frames, with the new pair as the back-ups.  Fortunately, I did have the good back-up pair when disaster struck.

I wasn’t terribly optimistic about the chances of a decent repair, but after two days in the back-ups, I bought some super glue to attempt to salvage my favorite spectacles.  At first it didn’t seem like it would work at all — it was very difficult to hold the two pieces together in just the right position without gluing my fingers to the plastic in the process.

However, I managed a fairly decent, if not quite perfect, repair job.  They’ve held up through a couple days’ wear, though I’m not sure it’s wise to go to far from home without the back-ups.  Either way, I’m happy to have my comfy plastic frames back in action for now, and I’ll probably look for something similar the next time I’m glasses shopping.