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I had a nearly identical "so what" thought when I went to college. I had just settled into my dorm when one of my roommates called us over to ogle some freshmen

I had a nearly identical "so what" thought when I went to college. I had just settled into my dorm when one of my roommates called us over to ogle some freshmen girls in short shorts somewhere walking by. They were preoccupied about it, but I had grown up in Florida near the gulf. I was honestly surprised by their interest: I had never met these young ladies and thus they were just unremarkable background people. But these guys acted like they had found an oasis in a desert. Sure they were pretty, but most girls were, right? I was informed that my opinion was incorrect and confusingly out of touch with reality. In contrast, I once went to the Hayden planetarium and saw the galaxy for the first time. If I'm honest, I may be willing to admit I teared up more than a little. The experience utterly awestruck me, and that was merely a simulation. Bad eyesight combined with poor night vision and light pollution means I had never seen the Milky Way. Hell, the first time I got glasses in second grade was the first time I could make out leaves on a tree! Up to that point, they were just this thing I knew was there, but I had never seen one rustling in the wind. Just some shape blobbing about. To this day, I can be content to just sit outside and watch trees sway in the wind for an hour. It honestly is just the most peaceful thing to see such detail moving all at once. A lot of people just don't understand it, as trees are about as ordinary as you can get; but to me, I remember how they used to look (and can just remove my glasses). They're rich in beauty. TL;DR: If you lived without it, you'd be amazed how much you'll appreciate it.

egypturnash 12y ago
I recently shifted to contact lenses. The one thing I really miss is going out to a park, taking off my glasses, and seeing what my brain finds in the images my very nearsighted eyes give me when I watch the trees sway in the wind.
dreamweapon 12y ago
I was informed that my opinion was incorrect and confusingly out of touch with reality. Little did they know that what really turns some of those young women on are not so much guys with muscles and tans, as... guys who are into planetariums, the Hubble sequence, tinkering with Maxwell's equations and such; and able to explain it all, while camping in the desert on a moonless night.
- dhimes 12y ago
  dream on, dreamweapon ;)
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    :) Well I kind of lost interest in astronomy after early puberty. And when I wrote that I meant it more allegorically. But give or take a few particulars about subject matter (and location), let's just say it's not that far off from actual experience. Which ended up being way better than anything I could have dreamt back during that time when I was being continually joshed and hassled (sometimes far from innocently) for my interests, in ways similar to what was described in the comment above mine.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
That's fantastic and in some ways awful - why did it take so long to get you glasses? And I shall listen to a tree in the wind on tonight's dog walk just to remember Cheers
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  That's a good question, and the answer is pretty benign: I didn't know I had bad eyesight. See, to me, it was perfectly normal to need to sit at the front of the class or to have to hunch over the paper I was learning cursive on; I remember being a bit frustrated that I couldn't understand the lessons if I wasn't close, but I was still young enough that it didn't occur to me my eyes were defective. Squinting was just how you made things clearer after all. At that age I sorta just accepted the world for the way it was. So in second grade, my teacher told my parents I may need glasses, and a while after I got some and learned just how near-sighted I was. (I'm currently about a -7 diopter.) I've come across a few other people who had a similar experience. From what I've gathered, it seems that first and second grade teachers become attuned to kids that need glasses. As for why I didn't know earlier, I think it's just that I was a fairly introverted kid, so I didn't do a lot of sports or group play. And the only real detail oriented stuff I did was reading, and I could almost literally bury my face in that. It looked like intent reading (and it likely was), but I suspect that was just a matter of holding the book close enough. It's easy to overlook the clues, but straightforward if you're specifically trying to notice 'em.

egypturnash 12y ago

I recently shifted to contact lenses. The one thing I really miss is going out to a park, taking off my glasses, and seeing what my brain finds in the images my very nearsighted eyes give me when I watch the trees sway in the wind.

dreamweapon 12y ago

I was informed that my opinion was incorrect and confusingly out of touch with reality. Little did they know that what really turns some of those young women on are not so much guys with muscles and tans, as... guys who are into planetariums, the Hubble sequence, tinkering with Maxwell's equations and such; and able to explain it all, while camping in the desert on a moonless night.

dhimes 12y ago
dream on, dreamweapon ;)
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  :) Well I kind of lost interest in astronomy after early puberty. And when I wrote that I meant it more allegorically. But give or take a few particulars about subject matter (and location), let's just say it's not that far off from actual experience. Which ended up being way better than anything I could have dreamt back during that time when I was being continually joshed and hassled (sometimes far from innocently) for my interests, in ways similar to what was described in the comment above mine.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

That's fantastic and in some ways awful - why did it take so long to get you glasses? And I shall listen to a tree in the wind on tonight's dog walk just to remember Cheers

HCIdivision17 12y ago
That's a good question, and the answer is pretty benign: I didn't know I had bad eyesight. See, to me, it was perfectly normal to need to sit at the front of the class or to have to hunch over the paper I was learning cursive on; I remember being a bit frustrated that I couldn't understand the lessons if I wasn't close, but I was still young enough that it didn't occur to me my eyes were defective. Squinting was just how you made things clearer after all. At that age I sorta just accepted the world for the way it was. So in second grade, my teacher told my parents I may need glasses, and a while after I got some and learned just how near-sighted I was. (I'm currently about a -7 diopter.) I've come across a few other people who had a similar experience. From what I've gathered, it seems that first and second grade teachers become attuned to kids that need glasses. As for why I didn't know earlier, I think it's just that I was a fairly introverted kid, so I didn't do a lot of sports or group play. And the only real detail oriented stuff I did was reading, and I could almost literally bury my face in that. It looked like intent reading (and it likely was), but I suspect that was just a matter of holding the book close enough. It's easy to overlook the clues, but straightforward if you're specifically trying to notice 'em.