Summary: In this week's show I tell you about my experience of wearing glasses. Also includes PDF transcript, vocabulary worksheet, and Grandad's Glasses Poem Transcript. John Hedgely's website. Grandad's Glasses on Youtube Wearing glasses EFL ----------------------- I have worn glasses since I was 11 years old. Before I got my glasses, I thought it was normal to see the world as a blur - to see things unclearly. I was so amazed the day I first wore glasses. I remember sitting in the car, and saying 'wow, I can see the bricks on the houses and the faces of drivers in their cars,' I was gobsmacked - it was a complete surprise for me. It was so wonderful to see things clearly. Things were no longer blurry. These days I wear glasses and contact lenses. Contact lenses are pieces of plastic that I put in my eyes so that I can see properly. I don't usually wear my glasses when I go out to socialise with friends. I don't feel attractive in my glasses. I feel like a nerd - an unattractive, awkward person. The glasses I wear at the moment are very light and comfortable, but I feel totally unsexy in them. They are boring glasses. I like glasses that stand-out - glasses that people notice. The problem is, most sexy glasses have frames that are heavy and uncomfortable. When glasses are heavy, they give me a headache. My head gives me a pain. Also, the worst thing about wearing heavy glasses is that they make the bridge of your nose - the bridge is the top of the nose where glasses sit- go red. Your skin gets damaged by the heavy glasses, and over time, the shape of your nose changes. This is why I now wear boring, unsexy glasses. My eyesight is quite bad. I always need to wear glasses or contact lenses. As I look at the computer screen now where these words are typed in size 11 font - I cannot see anything without my glasses. Sometimes I wonder how about how it was for people before glasses had been invented. I imagine myself as an old, blind woman. I cannot see anything far away but I can close up to sew (this is when cloth is joined together to make clothes). I imagine myself sitting in a chair sewing. I imagine this as my life - blind, old, sitting in a chair, sewing. I can only see my hand in front of my face. I'm lucky to live in 2012! I wear contact lenses most days. They are often uncomfortable and irritate my eyes. If I ever sleep wearing my contact lenses, I usually wake up with red eyes and an eye infection. Swimming is not a good idea with contact lenses. Either in a swimming pool or in the sea, it really hurts if water touches my contact lenses. And sometimes - this is the most painful thing about contact lenses - a contact lens will fold over - will bend - while it's in my eye. For a moment it might even go to the back of my eye. It's a really sharp, sudden pain and I have to run to splash water on my eyelid - on the outside of my eye. I don't know why this happens, but it's really horrible. When I was at school I really didn't like wearing my glasses. I was embarrassed. In my school, boys and girls had separate classes. In fact we even had separate buildings. I didn't like the boys to see me wearing my glasses. This meant I could never really see what the boys looked like. I knew their names, but not their faces. When my friends talked about boys in our school I used to pretend I knew who they were talking about. The truth is I could never see these boys. I only knew their names. When I was in Nepal - this is a country next to India - I had a disaster with my glasses and contact lenses. My bed in Nepal was really hard - it was like sleeping on a park bench -it was a really uncomfortable bed. Much more like a piece of wood than a nice, soft bed. Anyway, when I was getting dressed one day I sat down on the bed, and heard a worrying crunch. The crunch was the sound of my glasses breaking. The bed was so hard that my glasses had snapped in half - right down the middle. One piece glass fell out.
