The following is a subject that is very close to my heart, or rather, very close to my face. As you can probably see from the mug that accompanies this column, I wear glasses. I also occasionally suffer from very acute cases of hat-hair, but let us concentrate on the eyewear.

I do not wear them all the time. Every once in a while, I will jam little pieces of plastic called contact lenses into my eyes. Half the time I am either too lazy to put them in or my allergies make contacts a little too uncomfortable. Bear with me, I?m going somewhere with this.

When I am not wearing my glasses, people are nicer to me. Checkers acknowledge my presence when I am in line at the supermarket, instead of staring right through me as they ring up my groceries and take my money when I?m wearing glasses. When I am walking around campus, others will do their best to move aside and let me pass if I have contacts, instead of acting like they are trying to walk into me when I have glasses. If I go to a bar or restaurant with contacts, I get my order taken quicker than when I have my specs on.

This is because people who wear glasses are nerds. Rather, that is the conception that non-wearers have of us bespectacled folk. They believe we have burned out our eyes from too much reading, or maybe we had them injured in a tragic pocket-protector accident.

I have glasses because I have astigmatism. That is just a fancy way of saying I was born with broken eyes. My rods and cones don?t function the way they should and if that isn?t enough, I have to deal with the baggage that comes with glasses.

My least favorite people on the planet are those who wear frames with regular pieces of glass in them because they think glasses make them look distinguished. I want to grab these people by the collar and scream into their face, “Screw you, you little faker!”These people do not understand what a pain in the neck it is to wake up in the morning and have to grope like an idiot, trying to find glasses in a blind, sleepy fog. They have never had to live with the fear that their glasses were going to fly off when riding a roller coaster. This, unfortunately, is my life.

The sad part about all of this is that as I get older, my lenses will get thicker. I will become more and more dependent upon lenses for seeing, then come bifocals, then trifocals. Then I?ll have a dog dragging my tired ass around.

So what have we learned today? We have learned that just because a person wears glasses does not mean they should be given wedgies. One of their five senses is messed up, so lay off and be nice. Also, for those of you who think only nerds wear glasses, wait 20 years, your eyes will be worthless too.

The Editors can attest that Ryan Flatley is, in fact, a nerd. But not because he wears glasses. E-mail him at [email protected].

Send comments, questions, or concerns to [email protected].

For questions orinformation regarding the site, please contact [email protected]