This past week, I got some sort of virus that included a mini eye infection (like a low-key pink eye), so I’ve been wearing glasses instead of contacts until my eyes get completely better. I haven’t done this since I started wearing contacts nearly a decade ago (which was after I’d already been wearing glasses for four years; my eyesight is the absolute worst). It hasn’t been that bad, and I’ve already gotten used to it again, but I’ve been reminded of some of the not-so-desirable quirks of wearing glasses that I’d gleefully put behind me when I started wearing contacts. If you wear or have ever worn glasses for an extended period of time, I’m sure some of this will resonate with you. .

1. When it rains.

This has to be the top one. Every time you step outside and feel the small droplets begin to come down, you try to shield your face and pull your hood over your head, only to remember that your hood doesn’t extend far enough to protect the lenses of your woefully exposed glasses. You trudge along in defeat as your vision becomes increasingly smudged, until the world is a vast swamp of blur that you’re forced to navigate with peril before finally stumbling into your destination and trying to discreetly wipe your lenses with a tissue or, at worst, your damp shirtfront.

2. The glasses sliding down the nose.

As the day progresses, you notice that you have to keep pushing your glasses up the bridge of your nose. At some point, you’ll try to soak up the oil in your face and on your glasses with some sort of cloth, but the firm grip will only last for about ten minutes and you’ll resign yourself to the shoving-up-the-glasses motion.

3. When your face makeup gets on your glasses.

(This is not what anyone ever looks like with the glasses/makeup combo)

This one is a little more specific to makeup-wearing people, but it was always one of the most annoying things for me about wearing glasses while also trying to wear makeup. It’s also related to the whole oily nose problem, because as your nose gets oily, your makeup starts to slide off onto the center of your glasses so that when you take them off, you get a nice view of the concealer/powder that used to be on your nose and an even nicer view of the two bright red oval marks on either side of your nose where said makeup has rubbed off. This is why I’ve taken to putting on as little makeup as possible when wearing glasses (which, on the plus side, has definitely shortened my morning routine).

4. That uncomfortable feeling you get behind your ears after wearing your glasses for a long time.

I feel like this only happens when you have thicker, plastic glasses, but I’ve definitely noticed that after a long day, the area behind my ears where my glasses rest will start to ache a little. At first, I’ll forget why and think, Wow, what’s wrong with my ears? Then I remember the fact that I’ve shoved thick plastic frames in between my ears and my head and I mentally apologize to my ears.

5. Glasses gradually getting loosened/bent.

This happens over a longer period of time, but my last pair of glasses reached the point at which one side could basically flop back and forth because the screw had become so loose. Granted, they weren’t very expensive glasses, but I’d become quite attached to them, so when the eye person at Costco told me that they’d just keep getting looser and I should probably just go ahead and get a new pair, it was a sad moment.

6. The dramatic and disconcerting difference in focus between what you view through your lenses and what you can still sort of see through the slivers around your lenses.

(This picture makes it look really cool, but when this is actually your perspective, it feels very unsettling.)

This only really applies to people who, like me, have horrendous vision and need extreme prescriptions (to the point that I’m going to need laser eye surgery in the very near future because my prescription basically can't get any higher). When I walk outside in the morning with my glasses on, it takes me a little while to adjust to the fact that I can’t look too far up or down, or I’ll feel very jarred with the blurry/super-in-focus difference.

7. Your glasses making your eyes look really small/obscuring their actual proportions.

This is a thing for other people, right? When I look at myself with glasses on, my glasses don’t frame my eyes in equal proportions—as in, they partially obscure the top half because they can’t sit at the very top of my nose. So it kind of looks like I have 3/4 eyes, which is a bummer because I actually enjoy my sort of large eyes and feel somewhat disappointed when their glory is outshone by these thick frames of plastic on my face.

8. Constantly having to wipe off random dust particles and grime from your lenses.

After avoiding it for as long as possible, I’ll finally reach the point at which I can no longer ignore all the stuff on my lenses and I’m forced to use my little spray cleaner and cloth to wipe it all off. Also, sometimes the sauce from a meal or bits of food particles will splash onto my lenses without me noticing until I leave the table and realize that I’ve been talking with balsamic vinaigrette on my face.

9. Any sort of physical activity while wearing glasses.

(No one is ever this happy to be wearing glasses while running.)

This should be pretty obvious. Exertion leads to sweating, which leads to the oily nose, which leads to the glasses sliding down, which leads to the hand having to push them back up every ten seconds (literally), and so on. It’s a vicious cycle.

10. When people feel like sporting the “nerdy glasses look” and wear non-prescription lenses.

(I'm talking to you, Jimmy.)

Honestly, this is one of the trends from the past few years that has annoyed me the most. People buy cheap, non-prescription, thick black glasses to make themselves look more hip/nerdy/quirky (or something), but how nice it is for them that they can just take those glasses off whenever they like and still see perfectly well! Meanwhile, I’m over here with my thick prescription lenses protruding from my glasses frames and I’m thinking, You’ll never understand.