Originally published in The Clifton Courier, June 13, 2018

I’m posting this on the 6.20am bus on Thursday morning, so please forgive the lack of italicised commentary. As much as I love the idea of adding extra info like I’m in the bonus featurettes in the box set DVD of my life, reading and writing on the bus makes me queasy. And as much as I’d love to have an excuse to head back home on this dreary, rainy day, I’d prefer not to have to deal with the fallout of vomiting on the upholstery or, even worse, another passenger. I probably should have public vomit insurance, but, as far I know, that doesn’t exist yet.

And, with that, please enjoy the latest of my ongoing first world complaints.

There are plenty of pros and cons about my glasses.

The biggest pro, obviously, is that their dark, circular rims communicate to the world that I enjoy a good Wes Anderson movie, I know the lyrics to more Modest Mouse songs than just Float On and that I probably shop at op shops (in case the bold, high-waisted plants I’m probably wearing wasn’t a dead giveaway). They act as mini-windshields when you’re in an open-aired vehicle, meaning you can keep your eyes open without the fast-moving air stinging them. They give you a sense of protection to ease your irrational fear that a magpie is going to go right for your peepers.

And, I suppose, they do help me to see.

However, with all these positives, there are also negatives.

For one thing, they perfectly illustrate just how much of a greasy person I am. I wipe my glasses constantly because I’m forever smudging my lenses with my grubby little mitts. I can’t pinpoint the cause of this, but perhaps it has something to do with my “more is more” philosophy when it comes to butter.

Opening an oven door instantly transforms my glasses into fog simulation goggles. It’s annoying and, actually, quite dangerous when you consider I’m carting around piping hot (and expertly-prepared) food with low visibility.

And then you have the issues with rain. The droplets on the lenses obviously impact visibility, but the splashed glass effect also looks quite funny to other people. This means that you want to run dramatically through a rainstorm as you deal with your emotional issue of the day (or, just as legitimately, an emotional issue you just invented because you didn’t have anything bothering you at that particular point in time you but still wanted to make use of the moody weather) and turn up unexpectedly at someone’s doorstep, the theatrical effect is lost. No matter how many times you listened to How To Save a Life by The Fray, your I’m-broken-but-adorable act will be undone by the comedy of your water-speckled glasses.

I discovered a new glasses complaint over the weekend. Unless I’m extremely tired, I don’t hop into the shower with my glasses on. I’m short sighted, so I can definitely manage to navigate the metre square enclosed by tiles, glass and an invisible sound barrier that keeps my renditions of Celine Dion’s classics from leaking into the rest of the house. However, after years of staring at a computer screen for much of my day, the details get a little foggy at my feet. I mean, I can still make out that I have all ten toes (and, thanks to an overzealous dancer at the office Christmas party, nine-and-a-half toenails) but there is a thin filter of obscurity down that low. So when I’m showering, I never realise how dirty my shower is.

I don’t notice the sludge, comprised of soap scum, my dead skin cells and miscellaneous sauce spillages to form a blackened splattering on my tiles. I don’t know that my shower represents every colour on the grime rainbow – from pimple pus yellow all the way through to dried dam scum greenish-black.

I only realised this when I randomly decided to clean my bathroom over the weekend. I thought I only needed to freshen things up, because I’m not really that dirty of a person. I don’t spray fake tan or use mud masks or anything, so I thought a little once over was all that was required. And this was somewhat true – because everything at eyelevel was mostly clean.

But when I knelt down by my shower, fully bespectacled, I was horrified by what came clearly into view. I’m used to asking myself “why are you like this?” but this was a completely different tone. This wasn’t a half-disappointed, half-amused exclamation, it was a confronting blend of disgust and concern.

I was in that shower scrubbing for the good part of an hour.

And here’s the conundrum: my poor vision meant my shower was becoming a bacterial breeding ground unchecked but, on the other hand, I was happily oblivious to the fact that I was bathing in mould, probably building up one heck of an immune system. Ignorance is bliss, no?

Didn’t my poor vision protect me from the grimy reality I was living?

Does it matter that my shower was so dirty if I never noticed?

The answer to that question is: yes, obviously. That’s how you get tinea, you filthy, filthy human being.

I pledged to never let it get that bad again, and I meant it. But then, I didn’t even notice how sparkling clean my shower was when I next used it.