The Vision to See Things Clearly

One weekend that October, I arranged to go see H, who was now attending the college she had checked out during her previous visit.  The day before I was planning to go visit her, she called to cancel.  Her excuse was that she couldn’t see; she had run out of contacts, and was still waiting for her next set to arrive in the mail.  She was just secluding herself in her dorm room until they showed up.  I was a little surprised, and pointed out that she should be able to get by with just glasses, to which she responded that she didn’t have any.  I told her that was a problem I would help her solve the next day if her contacts still hadn’t been delivered.  As it turns out, they did arrive and we connected up and headed out to lunch the next day.  On the way there I pointed out that since she was headed to Africa the next semester, she would be in trouble if she couldn’t find clean water to take care of her contacts.  She agreed, but pointed out that as a broke college student with parents who were out of work, she couldn’t afford glasses, especially since her vision was bad enough to require expensive ones.  Being someone who doesn’t let himself be limited in that way, I pointed out that while I couldn’t fix her vision, I could rectify the financial limitation.

I wasn’t sure exactly how that would work, and it seemed like a strangely personal problem to be helping with, but I wasn’t going to leave my friend stuck in a foreign country unable to see properly, if I could have prevented it.  There happened to be an optical shop next to the restaurant we ate at, and she still had her prescription on her, from her recent contact order, so we headed there after lunch.  There wasn’t much of a selection of frame options, but we looked through all of them before she decided on a pair she liked.  It turned out that she was right about having an expensive prescription.  There were two options available, and after a short discussion, we decided to go with the more expensive choice that should provide the best result for both vision and appearance.  I figured there was no reason to go halfway.  If I was going to the trouble of giving her something, we should make sure it was something she was going to actually use.  Being unfamiliar with the process, it was a surprise to be told they would be ready in two weeks.  What if she hadn’t already gotten her contacts that day?  How would waiting two weeks have been useful?  I later learned that we should have gone to Lenscrafters if we wanted an immediate solution.

Their arrival date happened to be on her birthday, so I told her to consider them a birthday present.  It definitely ended up costing much more than I had originally anticipated, but that was fine.  At the time it was probably the most valuable gift I had ever given anyone, but it became the first of a growing series, and probably now doesn’t even make the top ten list.  Ironically I think she hardly used those glasses in Africa, or for the next couple of years, but I much later learned that they became important in dealing with a separate issue.