- I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past how much I detest the “Fibs your parents told you as a child” concept.
- What part of this is supposed to be funny?
- Why is this something parents would lie to a child about anyway? If she doesn’t want to wear glasses, will the promise of not having to wear them twenty years in the future make a bit of difference?
- That said, I wore glasses every waking moment from my pre-teens, and then suddenly stopped needing them when I was 44.
Funny story there: I thought my eyesight was really getting bad, because I was having a lot of trouble focusing. One day I was with a friend and I was trying to read a map, and I just couldn’t. She said “Try taking off your glasses.” And… problem solved: I didn’t need the glasses, not for close-up or for distance, and wearing them was the thing screwing me up. Who knew?
Comics I Don't Understand 
I was the first in my immediate family to get glasses, and it apparently disturbed my father in some way. He was told a bad misunderstanding, sort of the reverse of what’s in this cartoon. The idea was that wearing and seeing thru your glasses was lazily giving in to a weakness, and allowing your eyes to further deteriorate. Whereas taking them off and struggling to focus without them was like doing exercises, that could strengthen your eyes and eventually decrease your dependence on these crutches.
Simply stated – contacts. Or laser surgery. Not that I can have either, but still . . . .
I don’t dislike “True Lies” nearly as much as I despise “crowd sourced” comic strips. That said, while the lie as related in the dialog balloon is not even a little bit funny, the artist has introduced a tell-tale contradiction, in that the speaker is wearing glasses. If the garbage he is spouting were actually true, then he wouldn’t need those glasses now, would he?
P.S. A perennial offender on the crowd-source issue is “Pluggers“.
OR you could end up like this . . .
Comics like this aren’t trying to be funny. They are “I can relate!” ones. It’s similar to lists like “How did we survive childhood?!” with examples such as drinking water out of a garden hose.
Mark M’s got it. It’s relatable, which may cause a chuckle for those who share the experience. At the very least an “Wow, my parents weren’t the only ones!” I also don’t think the “lies parents told” were meant to be cruel or caused any long psychological damage. They were just silly little stories, or jokes, meant to tease or cut down on protests. You figured it out soon enough anyway.
“If the garbage he is spouting were actually true, then he wouldn’t need those glasses now, would he?”
He could be relaying bitter experience. “I refused to wear glasses when I was your age, and look at me now!”
Mitch4, when I was in grade school, my eye doctor deliberately gave us glasses with lower power than 20/20 because, he said, giving us full power would speed up the rate at which our eyes got worse. Your father might have gotten his wrong impression from a trusted professional.
My aunt always insisted her eyesight got worse because she wore glasses at a young age.
I always kind of figured her eyes got worse because she got older (and in the meantime she wasn’t walking into walls).
Mayo Clinic eyesight facts:
https://mayoclinichealthsystem.org/locations/la-crosse/services-and-treatments/ophthalmology/myths-and-facts
That Mayo Clinic link suffers from trying just a little too hard, such that you lose trust in everything its saying. For example: “Wearing glasses that are too strong or otherwise wrong for the eyes cannot harm an adult – although it might result in a temporary headache. At worse, the glasses will fail to correct vision and make the wearer uncomfortable because of blurriness.” So wearing glasses that are too strong can’t hurt you, unless you consider a headache to be painful…?!
They also say that using your nose won’t wear it out, nor using your ears — yet almost everyone is familiar with acclimating to a scent, where after a while, you can’t smell something anymore. And anyone who’s ever been to an over-amplified concert knows that your ears stop working as well for a day or so afterwards, and constant exposure can do permanent damage. Heck, even with the eyes, if you look at something too bright, your eyes will stop working until the cones and rods can regenerate, which will take in the 10s of minutes, if not more (and looking at something very bright, like the sun, can permanently damage your vision).
So I get they’re trying to reassure us, but they shouldn’t fly in the face of common sense common experience. They should also not be too overeager to dismiss pain as not hurting…
It’s also got quite a flavor of mistaking freshman physics for reality, kind of like proclaiming that pitchers can’t possibly throw curve balls so it must be an optical illusion.
larK: I think in the context of that sentence, and the question that it’s answering, we can understand that they mean that it cannot harm the vision of an adult.
Although, actually, I’m not totally sure that I would say that a headache “harms” you. I would say that it “hurts” you, but not so sure about “harm.” I could see it either way.
Eight glasses a day…
Good one.
Acclimating to a scent doesn’t wear your nose out. It’s a temporary situation. Just as bright lights can dazzle the eyes. I think you need to read those things as harm to your vision. Yeah, headaches aren’t great but that not what they were addressing. Does it cause permanent vision problems. When you’re answering questions like that, if you include every single bit of information and caveat then end up with a set of long answers that people stop reading.
Staring at a laser will cause permanent vision problems. So will staring at the sun during a total eclipse.
It’s also bad for your vision to wear glasses, if you put them on wrong and jam them in your eyes.
I feel like this thread is overly picky on an article that’s just trying to explain that it’s safe to wear glasses, and illustrating their message with some simple, easy-to-understand analogies, rather than citing a bunch of scientific papers. Analogies are just analogies, not proofs.
“So will staring at the sun during a total eclipse.”
Staring at the sun during a partial eclipse will damage your eyes. Once the eclipse reaches totality (if it does at your location) you can and should put down your sun filter — otherwise you will miss the experience of a lifetime.
Actually, you shouldn’t stare at the sun when there is no eclipse. Staring at the sun is uncomfortable so people normally have enough sense to look away quickly. During a partial eclipse, there is enough motivation to keep looking despite the discomfort, and inevitably a few people ruin their eyes.
I got so scared by the warnings in advance of my first solar eclipse that I wanted to stay in my bedroom until it was all over. My parents practically had to drag me out to “see” it. I wasn’t really that impressed by the “pinhole camera” method, and sort of figured if that was all there was to it, I could have stayed in my room.
I was 8. I remember my cousins and I were all deposited into a movie theatre (PT 109) for the duration.
Thank you, jajizi, for making explicit a question I often tried to raise but never got a unified definitive answer to. I also figured it is dangerous to look directly into the Sun at all times, and that eclipses were part of the warning just because it was assumed that was the only time anyone would be trying to do that.
But no, some teachers and so on would answer, it is especially bad to do during an eclipse, because that narrows / focuses / sharpens the sunlight and makes it worse than at random other times.
Even teachers aren’t immune from making shit up that sounds good.
Two years ago, the eclipse came through St .Louis. I got a pair of the safety glasses and joined my sister for a viewing party. Quite fun. As a former Astrophysics major I got to explain some details to the folks.
Back when I was in junior high (possibly early high school) there was a high percentage eclipse in the area. No special glasses were mention. One was told to make a pinhole projector to see it safely. I remember standing in the parking lot of the synagogue – it seems to me that my mom was there to do something or other with the temple sisterhood group or such and we had to come along – trying to make the contraption work. I could not – very disappointing.
There was an eclipse I want to say a year ago – which probably means more than 3-5 years ago – it was close to or complete across the central US – maybe 50-60% in NY. It was in August as we had planned to be away in Colonial Williamsburg. While not the reason for going, we figured we would be pretty close to the total eclipse. Then the trip fell apart (as most of our trips seem to do) and we stayed home. At the last minute we decided that we should go see the eclipse. The library system had received a grant to distribute glasses free of charge. We drove to our library – the sign on the door said they were out. We drove up to the library in the community north of us and there was a line for the last distribution of glasses. I got in line – no parking at the library due to this so Robert parked across the street and stayed there. The story was one pair of glasses per family. Fine with me – at least we would have a pair. Of course the people in front of me and the people behind me lied and got a pair each (at least the people in front was a family and they got two for about 5 people, the people behind me were a couple and got one each – hate to be around them in a real emergency if they needed to lie for a free pair of cardboard glasses so they would have one each when families were sharing). I found my way to Robert. Now the question – where will we go see it that is an open area and very nearby – as it had already begun. I mentioned the large county park – 2 blocks north ( Robert had not thought of same). We found a large open area – a few other small groups with similar thought nearby. We took turns with the glasses – I had trouble wearing them and seeing anything over my eyeglasses. I have to say it was an underwhelming experience. While we saw the movement across the sun, I had figured that it would at least get a bit darker in general – it did not noticeably due so.
I started wearing distance eyeglasses in second grade. I thought it great – I had eyeglasses just like my dad. Over the years I needed them for more and more things and then wore them all the time. In late junior high I got contact lenses (hard lenses back then) and wore them. Around when we were getting married I was having problems with eye allergies – I had both lenses in during the ceremony, but only one during the reception. I gradually stopped wearing the lenses and went back to wearing eyeglasses all the time.
As I aged I ran into the “my arm is too short for me to read”. I had been taking off my glasses to read for some time. I needed reading glasses – but could not buy the OTC kind as I did/do not see far enough without glasses for them to be usable. Progressive lenses it was to be. Over the years also got prescription reading glasses made for some uses.
I have now gotten to the point where I have progressive glasses, progressive poly-chromatic glasses (although last pair of such did not work so I have a spare pair of regular progressives as I waited too long – past a year to complain, but plan to try again now for same as I have had them in the past), reading glasses – 2 pairs in slightly different rx as same changed, but so little could still use the old pair – the old pair is at my desk and used at my main computer – as well as taken to clients with me for work, the new pair is in the kitchen and is used for sewing machine and right now for my laptop computer, then I realized that when I lie down in bed I am looking through the reading part of the progressives so I bought a pair of distance glasses, and sunglasses of course in the car. Two years ago we were in Barnes and Nobles one Friday night and I was waiting for Robert near the door to meet up to leave. I took off my glasses and was breathing on them and cleaning them with my tee shirt – I suddenly realized that I was holding the frame and one lens in my right hand and the other lens in my left. (Replaced with the progressive glasses I have now.) We realized that had I been at the store alone I would not be able to drive home at night – so there is now a cheap pair of distance glasses in the car. For reenacting I have reproduction 1700s eye glass frames with clear distance lenses and another pair with sun glass lenses. Before we found those I had modern wire frames glasses that were close also in clear distance and sunglasses. I keep these sunglasses in our van that we use to go to events so if I forget to bring the repro glasses I have them to use – plus I don’t like to wear the small lenses of the repro glasses when driving. They also work just for sunglasses in the van at other times. I also use the modern wire glasses for the few times we have done 19th century events. (Robert once tried on a shirt and joked – that is the most uncomfortable shirt I have worn in 4 centuries.) Understand these have been collected for over a decade as my eyes are fairly steady and have not changed most. But, when I read a book or a magazine I take off my glasses to do so as it is easier to see the publication.
As to the lying theme – my parents did do I have found out for some things best that children do not know about. Other than that my dad tended to go the other way. There is still a section of a home movie that he never finished working on. He filmed my sister jumping into a pool upside down so that it could be cut from the film and edited back so she would be jumping backwards out of the pool as we could not understand how such was done when we asked “how do they do that”?
Closest he got to the type of the lying in these strips was if there was some stand along the road – say someone selling toys – he would point out the window to the other side and say “Wow! Look at that everybody!” So we wouldn’t see it. Of course as time when on we knew this and continued to look the other way and make a big joke of it.
There was an eclipse I want to say a year ago – which probably means more than 3-5 years ago
Well, you bracketed it nicely. As I mentioned in my post above yours, two years ago.
Brian in STL – Amazing how fast time goes past these days. I mostly was able to figure that it was not a year ago as when I went through our personal file folders in May I came across a folder whose title made no sense – with the color label I use for keep permanently – do not go through annually. I opened it up and it was the pair of eclipse glasses we had gotten from the library – I had kept them for the next eclipse. If it really had been last year I would have remembered (I hope) what was in the file just by the title of it.
We had to drive to NJ today to have new RV batteries installed. (Luckily they had 2 generators running for electricity as they are in an area hard hit by Monday’s storms.) Just for the trip for a few hours – I wore one pair of progressive glasses, brought the second pair (the ones that don’t change color as they are suppose to) just in case something happened to the ones I was wearing and I had to bring my pair of prescription sunglasses. In theory this should have been a 5 trip – 2 hours there, 2 back and an hour to switch the batteries and I needed to bring 3 pairs of glasses with me! (Of course it took us longer to get there – car fire (not ours) on the Verranzano Bridge, and then we decided to stay in the area and have dinner to avoid driving home in rush hour traffic, etc.)
Plus Robert’s distance glasses which he needs for night driving – just in case and his OTC glasses that cut down on daytime glare.
” I came across a folder whose title made no sense”
@Meryl, are you going to tell us? Or keep us in suspenders?
The name was something like “sun glasses” – it made no sense as I knew I did not keep my sunglasses in a file. Nothing exciting Mitch. The glasses are made of cardboard and lie flat in the folder.