I was overdue for an eye exam, but I didn’t go because of that. A tiny piece of one of the arms of the eyeglasses I have chipped off a couple of weeks ago, and now that arm can swing out to an angle never intended by the frame’s designer. For this reason, if I look down at the floor, the glasses have a bigger tendency to slip off.

Glasses are annoying enough without having to put up with that.

I tried contacts years ago, but I couldn’t deal with the soft ones: the thought of reaching in and peeling a piece of Saran Wrap off my eyeball did nothing for me. (Except, maybe, to turn my stomach a little.) The gas permeable contacts, the hard lenses, are healthier because they allow oxygen to get to the eye. But I was never good at “popping” the contacts out, so I had to use a little suction cup device that I won’t describe any further. You can use your own imagination and probably come up with something that was as bad as it sounds.

Optometrists now dilate your pupils. There is no negotiating it. It is now the standard practice. So they put the drops in my eyes after the initial exams with eye charts and various light tests. Then they pulled out this ridiculously-bright light and shined it all around inside my eye. The optometrist assured me it was on the “low-beam” setting. If that’s true, I have no doubt that he could have had light shining out of the back of my skull if he turned it up full blast.

As he looked at my eye, he made an interesting comment: “Very good…no cholesterol.”

Cholesterol? In my eye? Well, yeah, I would think that’s very good, too.

It turns out that when someone’s cholesterol level is high, some of the fat lipids actually spill onto the eye, creating a slight haze on the cornea. Who knew?

I told him about the MUSC weight loss program and that my cholesterol had dropped from 219 to 139; he said he would have loved to see a “before” and “after” comparison of my eyes. Well, I guess I would, too, but I have no intention of putting 60+ pounds back on just for that!

The other strange thing: my vision seems to have improved. My left eye has always been close to 20/20. My right eye was once 20/40. Now both eyes read nearly a perfect 20/20. As the eye doctor said, it’s not a sharp 20/20: that tiny line on the eye charts is still a bit blurry, but I can make out the letters.

So he filled out a form for South Carolina’s DMV specifying that I do not need corrective lenses to drive, which is nice because I don’t have to fool with glasses when I drive to the gym.

And the lenses in the new glasses I’m getting will have a prescription two stops down from the old one. I’ll take 20/20, even “imperfect” 20/20, any day.