30 before 30: Feeling OLD - not my age, OLD

So for all my claims of OMG 30 I'M SO OLD, it's mostly a case of "she doth protest too much". (Mostly.) I'm upset about turning 30 mainly because there's a mental checklist that is still missing a huge number of checks, and that's what upsets me more than the actual getting "older" part.

As by now I've probably established that I am a vain emmeffer, I'm not too worried about the looking older part. A bonus of being of mixed ethnic heritage is that I've managed to inherit that lovely oily Mexican skin - bad for zits (which I've mostly outgrown by now), good for preventing wrinkles! I also have the weird blessing of never looking quite my age - when I was a teenager, I was often mistaken for being in my 20's, and when I've worked at high schools now in my mid-to-late 20's, I've been mistaken for a student when not wearing my "teacher clothes". This is even with a handful of gray hairs that have been growing in regularly since my teens! But the "sparklies" (as my mom calls the gray hairs) don't even bug me that much.

But this week, I had my first experience of where I felt OLD, aside from the whole being called "Ma'am" annoyance.

First, back-story. If you've seen my Twitter avatar, the one before the most recent choice was me in glasses. These were 10-year-old reading glasses that I only used occasionally - when I first got them, they were too STRONG and while the words were bigger, they made my head hurt after a while, so I never really got in the habit of using them. In the last few years, I pop them on for shoots and giggles or if I'm working on something that requires me seeing very tiny details well... and as of late, they haven't been that helpful, but they also stopped giving me headaches, so I figured it was just natural aging. Other than that, I don't wear glasses.

When I was in high school, my anatomy class taught us how to test our vision, and I found out I had 20/13 - I saw from 20 feet away what normal people saw at 13 feet. About 3 years ago, a re-test showed that my far-away vision had degenerated to 20/17. Still pretty good, and again, must just be natural aging!

This week, my friend J., who hired me to help him out here and there this summer while I've been unemployed, and I were driving home from work together when he switched his sunglasses to his regular glasses. He'd mentioned before that his prescription sunglasses were insanely dark-tinted, so I asked if I could try them on to see how much darker they made everything, and he handed them to me.

I pop them on, and not only do I not get an insta-headache, but everything looks sharper and more clear.

I take them off, and double-check that J. wears prescription sunglasses. He assures me that yes, they are prescription. I put them on again, and it's like I'm watching a high-def movie, and I can literally feel my eyes re-adjusting to the new vision. I try on his regular glasses, and same thing happens.

J. was laughing his head off at my reactions; I'm sure I looked like a monkey doing algebra as I tried to put two and two together. Apparently, I still didn't get it because J. states the obvious: "You need GLASSES."

This is still really weird to me - I feel like I see fine, it's just not as sharp as it used to be, and I assumed that this was what 20/20 vision was like. But the difference between my "normal" vision and J's glasses was pretty astounding. I mean, I'm not Mr. Magoo or anything here, but it's still a shock! Not that it's totally unexpected - my dad and my brother have each worn glasses since they were kids, and were also far-sighted. My mom has also been wearing non-prescription reading glasses for years. So obviously this was bound to happen, I just... I'm flabbergasted!

J said that he discovered he needed glasses the same way I did, and several other glass-wearers have confirmed that the same scenario clued them in as well, so at least I'm not a total moron. BUT now I'm thinking... what will it be like to wear glasses ALL THE TIME? I've never worn them for more than a few minutes at a time! How will I look? Do boys, in fact, not make passes at girls who wear glasses? ;p

Well, obviously, I have an idea of how I look in glasses, as I mentioned earlier:

I call this my "Liz Lemon" look

I'm still tripping out that this might be what I look like ALL THE TIME SOON. Of course, I have to wait to get insured again before I can actually know for sure if I need them, but it's still a trip to realize.

And it really proves that when you get older, your body really does degenerate. UGH. THAT'S why this new development makes me feel older: stone cold evidence of my body falling apart. ;p