Friday, January 27, 2012

Over The Top

I just caught myself looking over the top of my glasses at someone. Not as a theatrical gesture, but just doing it.

Of course, the first thing I did when I got my new glasses was to immediately spend an undisclosed amount of time staring in the mirror and trying out various poses: right profile with glasses, left profile with glasses, come-hither head-tilt with glasses, big grin with glasses, serious don't-mess-with-me-face with glasses, and so on. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone does this. The purpose of this activity, as you of course know, was to determine ahead of time what never to do while wearing glasses. Looking over the top of them was one of the unanimous NOs.

 Lest you think me vain, it's not because of the forehead rendered large and glistening and the chin doubled by this particular head-tilt. It's the whole... attitude of it that I object to seeing on my face. It seems a way to perch yourself atop your pedestal via your eyeballs and look down from your lofty height at something or someone. It's more than merely: "I'm looking down my nose at you", it's "I'm so high up here I have to look over the top of these frames and then down my nose." These are not impressions I wish to broadcast with my mild myopia.

Alas, I found myself today sitting in an undisclosed location zoning out and sightlessly staring at the action around me over the top of my glasses. The particular population who frequents this undisclosed location are a demographic that is signified, in part, by its seemingly contradictory propensity for gazing down noses and a hyper-sensitivity to being gazed at from atop a schnoz.

Imagine my predicament. I sit here in this veritable powder keg of scrutiny, not just looking but staring down my nose over the top of my glasses. Adding insult to injury, I was thinking. Which, when combined with not paying attention to my external surroundings, produces a sort of slack-jawed frowny face. In my defense, I was thinking about cheese enchiladas which obviously requires a great deal of concentration.

Having reached the end of my enchilada ruminations, I returned to my senses enough to realize that my glasses had slipped down my nose in my reverie and my gaze was affixed on a group of people directly in front of me. I realized what I must have looked like and immediately went into panic mode. Did they see me? Should I apologize and explain about the enchiladas? Should I just play it cool and turn around? These are the politics of frequenting such places - taxing, to say the least. But while I was settling my glasses into their proper position and settling upon a course of action, I realized the objects of my inadvertent gaze were completely consumed in an activity of their own: telling each other what I know to be outright lies.

It appears that not many people notice nor care what I'm doing with my eyeballs, glasses or enchilada thoughts. They have their own lies to tell. Discuss.

14 comments:

  1. heh heh, oh dear. I think it's hilarious how often I find myself doing some very thing I've been annoyed at others for doing. I bet you look smashing in your glasses, looking over the top or not.

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    1. I find it annoying when I find I am as annoying as other people. I do love my glasses. I'm new to the world of viewing things through private window panes. Still learning the etiquette.

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  2. This is why I wear contacts. I ruminate on cheese enchiladas ALL. THE. TIME.

    Heh.

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    1. Hello Leah Marie! Thanks for stopping by! I am so relieved that I'm not the only one who uses Tex-Mex as a koan.
      I do love my glasses, so. I'll just have to watch it, I guess.

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  3. Lasik. :-) And, I agree with V. I'll bet you're smashing in your frames. Hot librarian and all?

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    1. Ooh cool! Does that mean you can shoot lasers out of your eyes, now?!
      Thanks for the vote of confidence. I adore my glasses and I look exactly like a really hot librarian.

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  4. I think we all do the same thing w/ our glasses (and out enchiladas).. I also think that too many people are so self-involved that they would never notice the glasses gesture - or if the did, they will probably think it's directed at them because they are so important

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    1. Thank you for the reassurance. I'm new to the whole glasses thing.

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  5. I look over my glasses all too often, but it's not for snobbery's sake. Until recently, my close-up vision was so superstar fabulous that it easily compensated when I looked at close things with my always-on-my-face distance glasses. Now that 50 years of living has given me somewhat less stellar close-up visual acuity, I can't see diddly-squat through the lenses unless I'm looking outward a bit, so I tend to look over them. Not pretty, I'm sure, especially since I already have a surplus of forehead and chin, even without the tilt.

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    1. Here's a secret: I'm so vain, I always think the song is about me. When the eye dr. told me I had deficiencies in both distance and close-up, I literally screamed when she tried to say "bifocals". I have two pairs of smashing glasses now - one for reading and one for always on my face. So alas, I do some eyeball calisthenics myself when I don't want to switch glasses. I lied in my post. It's not the snobbery, it's the double chin that bothers me most.

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  6. This is too funny, Suzanne! While I don't wear glasses, I've been guilty of thinking about something totally unrelated to what my eyes were fixated on. Normally, I'm not looking at any one person, I'm looking past them. While I wouldn't be able to explain it, I've provided this 'Get outta jail free" card to those staring in my direction. At any rate, deep thought stares are not attractive.

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    1. I am guilty of this more often than I would like to admit. I am horrified by pictures that have captured me in the background somewhere looking like that - in deep thought. Do I really look like that when I'm thinking?! I think a lot. Do I really look like that a lot?! Hopefully no one is paying as much attention as I am to these things. Usually I am too busy with my own deep thought stare to notice the relative attractiveness of other people's. :)

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  7. One of the images that I have of my dad is when he was looking over his glasses. He did that a lot and he was as far from arrogant as a man could be. I always though it meant he was trying to see and understand with more than he vision. Sounds odd, I know, but I thought he was more attentive when he looked over his glasses. And now I see that same over the glasses expression in my brothers and it makes me miss my dad.

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    1. My dad used to do the same thing and I had a similar reaction to it that you did to your dad. The description of looking over the top of my glasses is applicable mostly just to the way it looks on my face and my own reaction to my vanity.

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