The Best Eye Doctor Experience Ever!

When I was in first grade, my school did the usual "eye check" during school, and unfortunately, I failed. This brought me to my first eye doctor experience at the ripe old age of 6 years old. Not uncharacteristically, I was in denial that I would actually end up with glasses after the whole exam. There must have been a mistake somehow because I could see just fine.

Unfortunately, the doctor did not agree with me, and I found myself being told that I needed to get glasses after all. Yuck! Being the bookworm that I was, I got my inspiration for what kind of glasses to get from The Babysitter's Little Sister series. There was this girl, Karen, in the books who had two pairs of glasses (one for each house she lived in) because she had parents who were divorced.

There was a special buy one pair, get the other pair for free going on when I picked out my glasses, and I found out that I, like Karen, could get to have TWO pairs of glasses! Lucky for me; I could keep them both in the same house! So, I ended up with glasses that looked like this:


















Cool, huh?

Yeah, kids at school thought so, too. I was teased about them (shocker!), and I was told that I would have to marry the only other kid in class (let's call him Bob) just because Bob was the only other person in the class to have glasses like me. And Bob was the kind of kid who appear to always have drool around his mouth most of the time and was the biggest, most awkward klutz we all knew. Not marriage material in my book.

Thus begun my slight trauma with the whole experience of glasses. Luckily, glasses have become much cooler looking today than they used to be, and of course, I am ever so grateful that contacts for a person with astigmatism were perfected for me to begin using regularly.

With the glasses/contacts situation's improvement, however, I began to have a huge decline in my positive experiences while at the eye doctor's office. I have had to sit forever in the waiting room, only to be brought to the room with the 'puffer' machine and be scolded for blinking every time the puff would go to try to touch my eye. (Let's be honest: after years of doing this, and anticipating the puff, it is hard to keep my eyes open long enough to go against the natural instincts of my eyes)

I had an eye doctor who got a little bit too close for comfort in an awkward kind of way. I have had doctors who have argued with me about the brand of contacts I needed to switch to, only to be annoyed with me when I had to go back to the original brand after all. I have had people not ask me what I have wanted in terms of special lens features on my glasses and end up charging me double what I thought the glasses would be. I have had people continue to call my parent's house about appointments and orders for years after I told them that I don't live there anymore. To say the least, I have that anxious, nervous, butterfly feeling most of the time that I have to go and interact with any eye doctor place.

This morning, per Jed's recommendation, I had an appointment at a local eye doctor's office right here in Skokie. I had such a positive experience that I nearly left singing. People were friendly, efficient, and made me feel taken care of and relaxed. I ended up having an exam, picking out glasses, and paying my bill in no more than 40 minutes. Wow!

So, if any of you out there are looking for a cute, reasonable, and local eye place to go to, I would love to point you to Eddy's Skokie Optical. Go there, and you are sure to leave there with a smile and one step closer to good eye sight.