The hopeless feeling around for glasses after they got knocked off is definitely a TruthInTelevision if you have bad enough eyesight. Most glasses frames (even for thick lenses) are thin enough that if you have bad enough vision there is no way you can distinguish them from the surface they fell on, even if said surface is a uniform and contrasting colour, as this troper can attest on those mornings when she has knocked her (-9.5/-10.5) glasses off the bedside table.

Played stright in this troper's life. She had bad eyesight since kindergarten, and now, as a young adult, can only see literally an inch in front of her before the rest of it goes into a blur.

Slightly subverted and played straight in this troper's life. I can see around myself in vague detail, but don't expect me to read anything more than 3 inches away or find my glasses without getting on my hands and knees. Then again my glasses are wire-framed so they're hard to see on the ground from six feet up.

Usually played straight with this troper, who can't see much past about a foot without his glasses, but has managed on several occasions to find just the ''lens'' of his glasses (one pops out occasionally) on the ground, once doing it after losing the lens sledding down a snow covered hill.

This troper is the same as the second and fourth people... but I have also noticed my vision getting worse in recent months.

This troper can see within a foot without his glasses, but after that the world blurs.

I wasn't sure if I qualified until seeing the above post. I can see detail including distinguishing between normal-sized letters) to within a foot (also, if something's written on a whiteboard, I might not even be able to tell there are letters there); after that, I need glasses... if I want to see those details without walking up to the object or person. I'm much more likely to use glasses to play VideoGames than to avoid RealLife obstacles while just walking around.

Same thing for this troper. I can see outlines of people and objects but I couldn't read what it would say. Of course this doesn't help that this troper has glaucoma as well as being near sighted as hell.

Slightly subverted in this troper's case. I wear glasses for nearsightedness, but I can still make out blurry objects without them. This has been a cause of Reality Is Unrealistic for this troper's friends, who, after stealing my glasses and receiving due punishments, exclaim, "But aren't you, like, blind without your glasses?"

Ditto this nearsighted troper. In high school, he sometimes acted in the school's plays and sometimes removed his glasses if he felt the character he was playing shouldn't wear them. Despite this troper being capable of differentiating people from a fair distance without glasses and being perfectly able to at least recognize the existence of a person from an even further distance, the inevitable questions would always come.

When this troper walked across a classroom without her glasses on her friend immediately asked "How did you do that?"

This troper has glasses to correct for nearsightedness. Someone actually asked how I was able to read without them, apparently not realising that eyes can in fact have different things wrong with them.

When spending a day in the waterpark section of a theme park, this troper's cousin had pretty much that same reaction. It didn't go much beyond mild surprise, but he was surprised by my walking around without any problems without glasses.

Yet another MegaNekko "blind as a bat without them" troper can see clearly sans correction at a distance of about two inches and will not attempt to find her glasses if they're misplaced (fearing accidentally breaking them. She makes her husband find them for her). She gave up on eye makeup due to how difficult it is to apply it with one's nose nearly in contact with the mirror, and when asked to read an eye chart on a wall without correction is prone to asking questions like "What chart?" or even "What wall?"

The last time this troper had an eye exam, "What chart?" is exactly what she asked the examining optometrist. The chart was one of those reflected-light ones, and the room was nearly pitch dark. She simply saw a bright square on the wall; not even the hint of letters on it and didn't realize that it was an eye chart.

This troper wears -6.50 OD, -7.00 OS. At that level of myopia, not only can you not count your own fingers without correction, but you're at risk for your retinas breaking and detaching because you don't have enough retinal tissue to cover the entire back of your horribly over-elongated eyeball. And I wish I was.

My correction's worse than yours (-8.5 OD, -7.75 OS) and I've never heard this from any eye doctor. You might want to double-check that. See you in the forums?

It's called lattice degeneration. Increased risk of that and other complications of intermediate to high myopia (posterior vitreous detachment, tractional and rhegmatogenous retinal tears, choroidal neovascularization, etc) is why many patients are referred to an ophthalmologist at or near the -5.00 mark.

This troper wears -7.25 OD, -10.00 OS and has not been informed about that. He has been informed that he is essentially a non-candidate for laser surgery, however (we can correct you to about 20/40 -- or you can avoid the risks and downsides of surgery and wear glasses/contacts to see 20/15...)

This troper has been told of the risk of retinal detachment, and her eyes are both -7.00, so it may just depend on the individual person as to whether you have it.

This troper knows of the risk of retinal detachment, but as far as he knows, it is still a minor risk, though above that for the population in general. He also wears something around -8 or -9, and is a bit surprised by the above comment about not being able to see one's own fingers at -7.

This troper was told by the optometrist that if she doesn't wear her glasses while she's driving, she'll be "illegally driving" since she can't read the signs four feet in front of her if the letters are less than 6 inches high. (She's nearsighted.)

You had to be ''told''?

Well, I haven't ''driven'' yet. I got the glasses ''before'' I started driving. And my nearsightedness was tolerable, up until sophomore year.

Yet another severely nearsighted troper here, worried that they might still be getting worse.

This troper would likely qualify as legally blind without correction (I don't know the exact prescription), but she can still see well enough to navigate and identify objects fine (although reading anything written on them is out unless she holds them, like, three inches from her eyes); it's just that the world is horribly blurry. On the upside, though, she only takes her glasses off when she's swimming or sleeping, and they cling to her head remarkably well, so losing them isn't really a problem, and she doesn't really participate in any activities that could break them.

This troper almost matches you there, except for the fact that she does ''Martial Arts''. Being unable to remove her glasses at all during sparring matches or outdoor classes (or just when she gets really sweaty) means she has some problems, but fortunately, like you, her dear spectacles hang onto her head pretty well.

I know how you feel. I still fight without my glasses on though if I could see normally I would probably be a lot better of a fighter than I am.

This troper averts this, but her mother really was BlindWithoutEm. On her way to the optician to get her glasses repaired, she didn't recognise the neighbours' dog and had to ask a little old lady at the bus stop to tell her when the bus arrived.

This troper's mother is slowly becoming this due to reading too much (therefore, she's farsighted), and can barely read anything without her glasses (most times, said troper has to read it if her mother can't/isn't bothered to find her glasses. Oddly enough, this troper used to have glasses (simply for reading), but got told several years later (her having given up using them long before) that she no longer needed them. However, said troper's eyes are strange, as she can focus her eyesight on command. If she has a headache or her eyes are bothering her, she unfocuses, and while the world is distinguishable, she can't read small text or see small details worth a damn, and objects closer than 2 feet get doubled. She ought to have that checked.

This troper thought that was normal...

This troper thinks it sounds like farsightedness that your eyes have been (less than cheerfully at times) acommodating for. That being said, this troper is nearsighted and can "relax her eyes into blurriness and seeing double" too, so I guess it doesn't always mean farsightedness...

Before I had Lasik (Yay for the magic laser!) I was completely lost without my glasses. My vision was 20/800 (or beyond that). While in college (pre lasik) my roommate fell off the top bunk and knocked my glasses off the desk by the beds. She was pretty disoriented, and I wanted to help her, but I couldn't see a damn thing. By the time I found them, she had climbed back up, with me unable to help her. The next morning, she asked why she had a big bruise on her side...

This troper has prescriptions of -10 in the left, and -15 in the right eye, with the latter compounded by a not-entirely-corrected-by-surgery lazy eye. He can see about 4-6 inches away from his eye just fine, but further gets very blurry very fast. With the right eye, NOTHING is in focus. Ever. This means that if his glasses get moved while off, they are lost and require a search on hands and knees. Even for the lens at 3AM in nearly freezing weather when it fell off in the middle of the road.

This troper can't remember his prescription offhand, but his hand noticeably blurs at seven inches, and he can't read sans glasses without getting in his own light.

This troper, though he doesn't know his prescription off-hand, thinks he's a slight subversion-without his glasses, everything's just kinda blurry and fuzzy-it even makes far away streetlights cooler to look at. (They look like stars. Its sad, what all you people with perfect vision are missing). That being said, he's nearsighted as hell, so without his glasses, any and all text must be within about six inches of his face to be in focus.

This troper has a similar situation, although people turn into blurs once he's around ten or fifteen feet away.

This troper can agree with that! Looking at a fully lit Christmas tree without my glasses is one of the cooler sights I've seen.

This troper is a walking, talking subversion -- he can function just fine without his glasses, including reading, writing and anything requiring bodily coordination, though his vision is slightly impaired, but he gets headaches.

This troper is so insanely near-sighted that when she got her new prescription (-5 in both eyes), her mother thought the lenses were coming out of the frames because they were so thick. I've scoffed at people who claim to have bad eyesight, hand them my glasses, and gotten the exact same reaction: "Damn you're blind!"

Same with this troper, except replace "she", "her" and "her mother" with "he", "his" and "I" respectively.

Get plastic glasses. They're thin. They're light. And they will break less fast, too.

This troper has a similar situation to the above example. I was told that "perhaps you should switch to that new lightweight plastic!" upon someone seeing how thick my lenses were. And then I told them that they WERE made from that particular lightweight plastic. Needless to say, I'm doing my best to save up for LASIK.

Without his glasses, this troper can't read the screen from more than 3 inches away. Not sure what the 20/# value is exactly, but it's sadly twice as good as some of his relatives. Ouch.

This troper can't see past her out-stretched elbow without her glasses. Being 18, I am rather perplexed as to how bad my eyesight can go before I actually become blind. But I enjoy watching TV, playing video games and computers far too much to stop staring at monitors until stupid o' clock in the morning.

If it's any comfort, this troper's eyesight (glasses since age 8) was bad by age 10 and had gotten to "Daaaaaamn, you're blind" by 16, with the rapid deterioration requiring new glasses at ''least'' once a year, but it leveled off a bit in my late teens and hasn't changed perceptibly in the nearly 10 years since. And I do a hell of a lot of sewing and needlework. Can't hold it more than 5 inches away from my face without my glasses, though.

This troper's mother didn't learn to drive until she was 33, because until then she couldn't afford glasses that corrected her vision better than 20/40 (the legal limit). She didn't see 20/20 until she was ''fifty''. I was the one child lucky enough to inherit the same problems, but fortunately I can buy the really, really super powerful thin lenses... which are still wider than my plastic frames.

However, my roommate can see just fine without her glasses. But only out of one eye. Which is why she can drive without them, but used to walk into things.

Completely and utterly subverted by this troper who wears fake glasses for style purposes only (said troper's vision is better than 20/20). When people pick up said troper's glasses and realize there's no prescription on them HilarityEnsues.

Same with this Troper, who does it 'cause the rest of his family, on ''both sides'', actually needed glasses at some point or another. Despite being the only one with perfect eyesight his whole life, he wanted a pair of his own. One girl actually thought they suited him.

Thank GOD for your good eyesight my friend. This troper has also noticed that women seem to prefer the "learned" look glasses give. Ironically, this troper's girlfriend at the time '''hated''' his fake glasses; doubly ironic since she's a {{Meganekko}}.

I might've dated your girlfriend's clone. My ex was a honest to GOD Megganekko but she ''loathed'' my fake glasses, even though other women adored them.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that they probably hated your fake glasses ''because'' they wore glasses. It can feel like you're mocking their real disability.

Another possibility, this troper has a glasses fetish, and a big part of that is knowing the person actually NEEDS their glasses and ideally IS in fact blind without em. So to her frames without prescription lenses are like a tease. A tease that kinda ticks her off. However, this troper is a -4 myope herself and doesn't feel like "fake" glasses-wearers are "mocking her disability". Then again, -4 myopia isn't much of a disability compared to cerebral palsy, which this troper also has. But she doesn't even mind people who can walk using wheelchairs as part of their fetish for disability. She supposes being a fetishist oneself makes one more open-minded.

As someone who wears glasses, I can say that I wouldn't resent that at all. In fact, when I get around to getting a Lasik treatment, I intend to wear non-prescription glasses (so I can take them off for physical activities). ''Because glasses are stylish.'' Even those with perfect vision can see that... that didn't come out right....

This troper is another subversion, she can see nearly perfectly without her glasses, but her depth perception goes funny. But due to being long-sighted in her bad eye, whenever she swaps glasses with someone, they say she's got awful eyesight.

This troper has it much the same way, except he never has depth perception -- even with glasses -- instead having learned to judge distance reliably by other means.

Ditto for this troper: he is very badly short-sighted in one eye but has serviceable nonadjusted vision in the other. Regular depth perception disappears when he leaves his glasses off, and his dominant eye changes from left to right, but he is still fully functional.

I subvert it when I deliberately walk around without my glasses some days. I can't read anything or recognize people's faces, but I can navigate well enough that people start asking if I got contacts.

This troper's mother is a perfect example of this trope. She also owns a pair of silly bug-eyed reading glasses.

This troper can barely read things a foot away without his glasses without it dissolving into a blurry mess.

I'm currently sitting with my laptop on my lap undating this. My shoulders are slightly stooped to lean towards the screen. I remove my glasses and I can't make out a single word on the page. I also regularly "lose" my glasses because I can't see them to put them back on my face when I wake up in the morning!

This troper has a bad habit of sometimes misplacing her glasses after taking them off. Since she can barely see without them, this is not very good.

This troper is pretty damn short sighted. This led to some confusion and surprise amongst the children of a class she helped look after during her Work Experience, when they realised that she wasn't looking at any of them when she took her glasses off to clean them. They were convinced that said troper was totally blind. She's not, but she's close enough to convince six year olds. .

This troper has since fallen into the 'daaaamn, you're blind!' category, and is fearful that he'll end up like his mother who wears contacts and bifocals at once for muddy-clear vision.

This troper won the fictitious "worst eyes of the day" award at her local eye doctor. She can see blurred shapes but cannot read these words more than about six inches away from the screen. Sad, she knows.

This troper is about a foot and a half away from her screen, but if she doesn't use her glasses, she can't read it. Shapes blur less than a foot away from her. It's extremely frustrating and makes her grateful that her glasses don't tend to fall off.

This troper mistook ER's opening credits for Japanese subtitles. o.O

Mild subversion: This troper did not realize he needed glasses until his middle school English teacher recommended it, so he didn't have to keep squatting up front to copy from the board. And thus the green blobs became leaves. However, while this troper's eyesight beyond a few feet is hazy without mild corrective lenses, his light sensitivity and motion sense are above average, almost low grade superpower. He also developed a keen attention-to-detail (or was born with it), so he regularly spots things other people missed, with or without his glasses on. Learning to see is as important as being able to see, says this troper's film professors.

That was this troper when she first got glassess. She misses the days when she had some semblance of eyesight...

This troper is something of a subversion - she can function without her glasses (although she wouldn't attempt to drive, as reading street signs can be problematic), but tends to feign BlindWithoutEm to keep her friends from stealing them (several of her friends like to take her things and run away, but don't seem to enjoy it as much when she doesn't seem to be able to see well enough to chase them).

Mild subversion with this troper. I can function--eat, use the bathroom, and nagivate basic landmarks--without them, but drawing requires a distance of >6 inches (or 15 cms) and reading, and subsequently school, is a lost cause. Considering that I'm, like, fourteen, I'm going to assume this is a BAD thing. I'm going to get off the computer for a while now.

This troper's right eye is badly nearsighted, so if she had to, say, wear an eye patch on her near-perfect left-eye, she would be screwed.

This troper only has mild short-sightedness, but is frequently joked to be BlindWithoutEm. Oddly enough, I tend to walk into things/trip over/ generally be clumsy much less when I'm ''not'' wearing my glasses, although this is probably because I tend to be more careful when the world is a bit fuzzy

This Troper also joins the ranks of this trope, and the day I decided to get LASIK done was when one of my contact lenses fell off... while I was driving in a highway. My little brother was NOT amused.

You finished to convinced me to never get contacts! Thanks! (I'm -15 in both eyes...)

Played kinda straight with this troper it's not that he can't see, it's that his eyes start ''hurting'' for no reason without glasses unless my eyes are closed.

Real life: "Can't read a book 4 inches away from my face without my glasses.", this troper said.

Real life: This troper can't see well without her glasses at all. Everything blurs up and she gets dizzy

This Troper can see perfectly clearly up to approximately 6 inches away (20/450~20/500 vision), and after that it blurs. But here's the weird thing: after about three feet, it does not get ''any'' worse. This has led to her recognizing people over 200 yds away without glasses or contacts. She truely disturbed her BF doing this once, as he wore glasses, and could see that she had just taken mine off and were cleaning them. He asked "who is that over there," and she glanced up, looked for a few seconds, and declared who it was. No squinting involved. She tends to recognize walks more than anything.

Subverted heavily by this troper's friend who, while she initially had decent vision without her glasses, after losing her only un-cracked pair, had her vision suddenly rapidly improve to 20-20. Seriously.

This troper personally knows an even stranger case similar to that: There were these identical twin brothers in my grade. Both got glasses in second grade. One lost his in fourth grade and eventually got 20/20 vision back, the other tried to do the same but was straight-up BlindWithoutEm. They're identical twins and I don't think the one with glasses has had any medical problems.

This troper is a rather odd subversion. Not only is he only mildly nearsighted, only really needing glasses while driving or sitting in the back of a class, but he gets headaches with his glasses ''on''. And yes, the prescription is correct and current -- it's happened with every pair he's owned. He avoids wearing them as much as he can.

Migraines can be triggered by my glasses here. The thing is, I'm around -4.25 prescription in both eyes, so it's very difficult to not wear them for anything more than reading a book (and even then, it's sometimes hard). Happens less of late, though, luckily.

For this troper, anymore than six inches in front of my face is blur city, made worse by fact my left eyes is apparently worse than my right.

This trooper is right there with you, buddy!! This trooper's brother, however, has the eyes of an eagle. (20/10 no lie!)

This troper is the reverse of this trope. I have excellent vision otherwise, but absolutely cannot see anything six inches or closer to his eyes.

This troper wears contacts, but has glasses for before going to sleep and such. She has a regular pair and a backup pair (The backups are about as useful as not wearing glasses). Guess who lost her glasses. Guess who then stepped on them. Guess who consequently crashed into many a wall. Her eyesight, without glasses is...well, she holds her laptop about 7 inches from her face while wearing her glasses. If she takes off her glasses, she can't read the screen.

Subverted for me, as most other glasses-wearers who have tried mine on end up asking if they're even prescription (including my sister & both parents). The other way around, though, I try theirs on & wonder how they can even perform basic functions without 'em.

This troper has been nearsighted pretty much all his life, but since he's also a computer geek, his eyesight got progressively worse for a while. Without glasses or contacts, I can see maybe a few inches in front of my face before things get blurry. I had a pair of glasses that were so thick on the sides that they acted as ''prisms'' (good luck doing any sort of serious image editing or GUI design work then). I wear contacts now and I don't know how I put up with glasses for so long. I've also replaced all of my CRT monitors with [=LCDs=] -- my prescription actually ''improved'' the last time I had my eyes checked.

This troper used to need glasses to find his glasses. Then he got married. Now he tends to misplace his hairbrush.

This troper is, right now, sitting on a couch with her computer in her lap. The words go so blurred they're hard to read even at this distance without her glasses.

Due to financial constraints, I can't take on the luxury of renewing my glasses with those Ultrathin Resin, and it would be just awkward to appear with two cigarette holders in place of glasses, since I have a pretty heavy astigmatism. So, I'm becoming blind ''with'''em. But since my career depends on using the computer and the eyes, I'm doubly screwed. Dammit.

I've got -5 in both eyes. Or possibly more, since I've started to be unable to find my glasses when I forget where I left them. Anyway, take them off me, and this very page becomes a messy blur of what could be described as "pixelated Dijon mustard" due to the yellowish color mixing with what were once letters. But she also subverts it, as her huge myopia makes it way easier to read or do any minutious work when the glasses come off.

This troper is a complete inversion of this trope. My glasses ''reduce'' the resolution and contrast of my vision, the lenses adjusting it from 6/3 or so to 6/6, and the tint taking the bright colours and reducing them to something less distracting. I did not know it was not normal for people to be distracted by the individual paper fibres on the exam paper they were sitting, and I only came to appreciate the difference the tint made once I had it. BlessedWithSuck indeed - my concentration's got a lot better since I got them, or at least I feel that way. This inversion ''does'', on the upside, leave some pretty nice opportunities for an IAmNotLeftHanded...

I can only see things if they're almost exactly 3 inches in front of my face, and many of my friends have noted the similarities between my glasses and being on various illegal substances. However, I've spent so long like this I've learnt to define the blurs easily and can even navigate without sight if I have a vague knowledge of my surroundings. Every now and then though, I like to evoke the trope when people take my glasses and see how they react.

This troper is horribly nearsighted, with anything more than a foot away from her becoming progressively more blurred-out. Hilarity ensued when she tried to get away with wandering around at a con without her glasses on (for the sake of her costume) and thus began walking into things. The hilarity was somewhat dampened after she tripped on an electrical cord she couldn't see and shattered part of her costume.

This troper plays this fairly straight. Without her glasses, she can only find her way around because objects in your typical room tend to come in many different colors. Now, if for some reason she were in a room where everything were a similar color, she'd be sunk. She's also very glad she isn't colorblind.

Raekuul was told by his optometrist that he needs to keep his glasses prescription up to date if he wants to drive. Given that he is more Forgets Where He Puts Them than Blind Without 'Em, plus that he isn't very interested in driving to begin with, it is unlikely that he will be driving any time soon.

It does make for some interesting situations with school, though. I don't have the worst vision in class, and I tend to sit towards the front for the days that I don't have my glasses, but my professors (and resident Anime Club leaders) had better make damn sure that they stay towards the front of the room.

Subversion: This belief is so widespread that this troper cultivates the image, so that on the rare occasion when he gets in a fight, and someone removes his glasses, he beats the shit out of them when they think it's over. Helps that this troper has trained for three years to fight without glasses and is a Black Belt.

@/DickRichardson can see without his glasses, but if he covers up his right eye without glasses on, his left eye makes '''everything''' illegible.

This troper has -8.5 in his right eye and -9 in his left. He is thankful he can pay for those ultra-thin plastic glasses.

I'm not COMPLETELY blind, but should my glasses fall off the nightstand I'm fucked. To give you a hint at how bad my vision is I can't read the huge text at the bottom of the page without leaning closer to the screen (I normally sit about 2 feet from the screen).

This troper one dropped his black-rimmed glasses in a heavily shadowed, grassy area in his backyard. Considering he has good vision in the range of about 3 to 7 inches from his eyes, he may never have found the things without his dad coming out to ask about something more than ten minutes after losing them.

This Troper and her mother are incredibly near-sighted and often have to ask her younger sister for help if they misplace their glasses. One day, this troper's glasses broke beyond help while at Lake Michigan with her boyfriend and his mother. The rest of the afternoon she had a "Seeing-Eye Boyfriend".

This troper cannot read anything more than a foot away without his glasses. He's literally useless without them.

My vision, last time I got glasses, was estimated to be around["vaguely in the ballpark of"] 20/400. My friends have joked that they can see other worlds with my glasses, and i've gotten comments like "how do you see in these things?" In a subversion, though, I have excellent night vision[due to my blue eyes; I'm terribly sensitive to high contrast/saturation and bright lights, inversely]. Though during the day I can see maybe eight inches in front of my face, and feel disoriented without them. Especially when bright lights are involved. And my vision started going bad in third grade, with glasses in fifth.

Like most of the above people my eyesight is fucking horrible. I don't know what my prescription is but I know I can't see anything more than 7-8 inches away from my face without my glasses. I used to wear contacts but stopped several years ago when I actually developed sores on the inside of my eyelids from wearing them. Thankfully I can afford Ultrathin lenses, because I fall into the "Damn, you're blind" category.

This Troper has myopia. He doesn't know the prescription, but his eyes will get sore if he is without his glasses for too long. And he has mild strabismus in the right eye. Barely being able to perceive depth is pretty unpleasant. It's all worth it to be able to marvel at how awesome everything is for 10 minutes or so after cleaning his glasses.

This Troper has rather poor vision. I'm currently hunched over a laptop's keyboard and if I take my glasses off the keys are blurry. Its bad. But I usually play it off as worse than it is, because I prefer to be Crazy Prepared. And like someone above mentioned, if someone thinks to attack me either when I don't have them or intentionally breaks or takes them, I'd like to get one lucky shot in before they realize I'm not quite as blind as I let on. My cutoff for clear vision is rather short, but so long as I don't have to read anything at a distance or distinguish too much detail I can get around ok.

This Troper likes to inflict her glasses on new people at work to watch them flinch when they try them on; for a good idea of how bad her vision is, hold your palm facing you about six inches out from your nose, and then pretend anything past that is a blur.

Isn't it fun?

Generic_Guy can see things up to one foot ahead of him after it starts getting blurry, and two feet later, he's wondering where the words went. Oddly enough, he could still identify people from very long distances without his glasses, and he could still 'see' anything but text perfectly fine. Damn those thin lines... damn them!

This troper's sister has eyesight so bad that she runs into tables when she doesn't wear them. Tables that she knows exactly where they are, because the're in the middle of the kitchen in the house she's been living in for the past three years... Also, when she broke her glasses on a roller coaster, she spent the rest of the day literally being led around by this troper, holding on to her braid so she wouldn't get lost in the middle of big empty room.

This troper has severe photophobia, and literally cannot go outside on a sunny day without risking blindness and migraines.

Albinism. 'Nuff said. This troper will trip over nothing, walk into things hard enough to leave bruises, and fall down stairs without her contacts, and needs reading glasses to play video games. Well, okay, she walks into things with her contacts, too, but not as much as before she got them. Fortunately, she's able to laugh at it, which sometimes leads to people think she hit her head.

This troper was so annoyed at falling into this trope when younger that he deliberately practiced doing many tasks without his glasses. He's reasonably competent without them now despite having vision well beyond -8.5. His suggestion for those curious - pay attention to shadows and light saturation, as that often gives a general clue to shape and orientation of an object.

This troper is nearsighted, and I can't see diddly dick past 1 foot without my glasses. Now, doing certain stuff like watching a certain 3D movie, or using binoculars, among other things is a real bitch.

The last time I had my eyes checked I was at -10.75 in ''both'' eyes...that was nearly two years ago, and they've undoubtedly gotten worse since then. I also think I heard something about a 160 axis in my left eye or something like that...well, my right eye does most of the work anyway, so I guess that's what it means. If I covered up my left eye it wouldn't make much of a difference at all. I've gotten the old "pretty soon we won't be able to make lenses thick enough for you anymore" speech numerous times, and yes, like most of you, my lens are thicker than the glasses (though the plastic frame does a good job of hiding it for the most part). And hey, they're D&G frames, so I may be nearly blind (if I'm not ALREADY), but my glasses are FABULOUS.

This Troper (@/BertieDastard) wears glasses constantly, except when sleeping, and showering. IN a subversion, however, I can see perfectly fine without them, and would, when I was younger, go without wearing them for a while at a time, just to see what people would do when they thought I couldn't see. The results were...interesting.

This troper has awful eyesight. Once, after this troper was done swimming at the local swimming pool with her best friend, and long story short, decided on getting Blizzards at Dairy Queen, ended up getting half an inch of skin scraped off her foot instead, called her Mom to pick her and her friend up, then realized she left her glasses in the pool locker. After getting bandaged, the troper, her friend and her Mom went to get the glasses. On the way to the pool, the troper looked at a random street and saw a black orbular thing going rapidly across the street. To this day, she does not know whether it was a cat or a tire.

This troper, sitting arms length away from a computer screen, can't reliably read the large text at the bottom of this page without his glasses. Yet, he can recognize most people he knows even without them.

This Troper has awful vision. Clarity lasts up to six inches at most, and like the above can't read the text at the bottom of the screen at arms length. Not only this, but he's been in a number of situations were a group of people are swapping glasses to see how each others' compare. He has seen several physically recoil away from his glasses after looking through, and even others who claim to have bad vision tell him his is awful. He's met maybe one person with worse eyesight than him in his life.

This troper has 20/400 vision, he can't see more than 9 inches without his glasses.

9? Lucky. Anything past roughly 2 ½ inches and she is completely blind.

This Trooper feels she can see without her glasses just fine... unless I'm attempting to read something that is in small letters, say, on the board in the front of class. When I wear them for a while, then don't, I always get a flurry of people asking how on earth she can see without them.

Subverted with T.T.--some of my friends only ever see me wearing my glasses, and get all worried when they see me without them. They seem surprised to find that I don't, in fact, need them all the time--just for things like watching TV/playing video games more clearly, and reading distant signs.

This Troper has quite a few problems regarding eyesight. I'm incredibly nearsighted without my glasses, to the point where the large text at the bottom is legible at a distance of 3 inches or shorter. I'm also colorblind in about every category and my depth perception is shot to hell. Which makes games that use {{Real Is Brown}} INCREDIBLY hard to play. A few times I have had the misfortune of losing my glasses in the morning, although the only bad thing that has happened so far is me confusing the jugs for maple syrup and teriyaki sauce.

Somehow averted completely with this troper, despite being 40 years old and spending up to 8 hours a day in front of a computer for nearly the last 20 years. I still do not need glasses or contacts... which pisses off my BlindWithoutEm mother and aunt.

Semi-example?. Due to an eye-condition, this troper has to wear sunglasses when going into sunlight (yes, yes, insert your vampire jokes here) so - if his sunglasses are knocked off while outside on a sunny day - he might as well be blind, because opening his eyes could cause serious and permanent problems.

This troper subverts it. She only wears her glasses when she needs to read something on the whiteboard, causing her friends to react in surprise when she mentions them. She did have a friend who was blind without 'em, so she decided to take them from him and run.

This troper, while having fairly bad eyesight, often has people underestimate her ability to see. For example, one time while swimming her boyfriend decided to attack her legs, and seemed genuinely puzzled that she dodged out of the way. Because apparently not being able to read a sign from across a four lane road and not being able to see your toes in waist deep water are the same.

This Troper has -8.00 OS, -5.00 OD (IIRC) and, without glasses, barely can see blurs. He plans to get surgery when possible, even though he likes wearing glasses and has a thing for girls with glasses.

I always made fun of my bad eyesight, not knowing exactly how bad it was... until I recently went to an eye appointment. My left eye was so blurry, I was astounded when I couldn't even see the largest line of text on the eye chart.

This Troper likes swapping glasses with new, also glasses-ed friends, to compare eyesight. At one point, a friend's reaction to putting on her glasses was, 'I CAN SEE THROUGH TIME!'

This Troper is temporarily without her glasses. This edit is being made with squinting and 700% zoom. It's still only barely readable.

I, this Troper, have this. Might be a matter of putting them on as soon as he wakes and taking them off only for showers or sleep.

This troper can walk around okay without my glasses on, but I can't read this very screen I'm typing on with my glasses off unless I'm about six inches from it. I have a weird astigmatism and my glasses hurt other people who put them on. I also always keep my old pair of glasses in the top drawer of my bedside table so if my glasses fall off the bedside table during the night I'm not fumbling around for them thinking "I should put my glasses on!". By the way, women wearing glasses are huge FetishFuel for me, and though I'm married and out of the running, throw away those contacts, ladies!

Sans spectacles and blinded by overchlorinated pool water, I was stumbling around the pool deck after phys. ed. class in high school. I went in the door I thought was the men's locker room. It was the pool supply room. I knew my error immediately because of the darkness, so I went back out and tried again. I went into the ladies' locker room by mistake but walked straight into a wall I wasn't expecting (due to differing layout with the men's lockers). I was getting a bit panicked at this point so I turned around and walked right into the lady phys. ed. teacher who was entering. She (probably, I couldn't tell) gave me a dirty look but then quickly realized that I couldn't see and pointed me to the right door. After that I started carrying eye drops with me for use after swim classes.

This troper isn't quite blind at close range without her glasses, but the world is still annoyingly blurry enough to give her a headache. Thankfully, she's pretty decent at mental GPS to remember where the hell she put the damn things in the morning. That and pretty shiny gold spectacles set next to your computer are pretty easy to find...

When I was about 5, i thought the people who wore glasses were literally BlindWithoutEm. Ironically, now I'm 14 and short-sighted.

Half averted with this troper. I can see without my glasses, but I'm legally blind in one eye, so I need them to stop my head from hurting after a while.

This Troper, being very badly near-sighted (e.g., text goes blurry at distances greater than 3 inches, is lucky to ''locate'' an eye chart without glasses, much less read it, etc.), had a bit of a scare while taking a vacation at an unfamiliar beach. After riding the surf on a raft for some time without her glasses, she suddenly realized that she didn't have a clue where she was (due to the current). Cue a long, anxious walk up and down the beach attempting to pick out her hotel from all the big whitish building thingies along the beachfront while simultaneously trying to dodge flesh-colored blobs wearing bright blurs of color (i.e., other beach goers)....

When a friend of this troper said she was practically blind without her glasses, she thought the girl was just exaggerating until she got the lenses covered with paint during an arts lesson. She literally preferred to walk with her eyes clothed because her vision got in the way and couldn't even walk in a stright line on an open field. She later explained that she's nearsighted with a number of about 3, and the actual problem is that everything isn't just blurred but also doubled, framed by shadows that aren't there and moved twenty degrees to the right. She wants to do a surgery once she's old enough. [[AC:TabletopGames]]

My character in a MedievalEuropeanFantasy RPG is a bat-man who lives in a perpetual blur (but can read a book if he sticks his face on it), and has ''no'' glasses. However, this is counterbalanced by echolocation, and a very good hearing in general.

Oh hey, this troper has a character like that, a jester's son who has horrible eyesight who was taught to read. While he ended up getting enchanted glasses that corrected his vision as well as let him see magic being used, he didn't always wear them as the magic was often quite a very bright and shiny spectacle that blinded him on multiple occasions.

ThisTroper is so nearsighted that - without her glasses - she can only focus on things that are less than four inches away from her eyes. Yes, colors are still distinguishable, but the more prominent blurs of color easily swallow the smaller ones. If she drops her glasses somewhere (as opposed to deliberately putting them in a specific place), she literally '''can't find them''' again.

Subverted with this troper who, though myopic, can see reasonably decently without his glasses. Provided you don't want him to read anything about twenty feet away and less than about 6" tall. He regularly goes to work without glasses as the worn out ear pieces cause them to constantly slip while he makes sandwiches. Once he steps outside, however, the trope is played straight as the sun blinds him and his transition lenses are at home.

This Tropers Tales page actually made me wonder what my vision is on a 20/20 scale (I'm -15 in both eyes) But I only manage to find that, yes, I'm "blind" without them because, apparently, the conversion scale stop at -6. I managed to find out that I was 20/300 (-4) at 4 years old though.

This Tropers vision is so bad I can't make out the laptop actually in my lap without my glasses. In a minor subversion because I find my depth perception is off without my glasses I actually usually find it easier to close my eyes and feel my way around rather than try and see without my glasses.

This actually caused me to meet my boyfriend. I was out getting the mail in nothing but green and white striped boxers ''without my glasses''. Needless to say, I didn't see the bike coming until he was getting off of it asking if I was okay and I was on the ground with asphalt in my palms. We hit it off.

This troper averts it..kinda he can see things in a 2 feet or so radias around him just dont ask him to read anything without his glasses

This troper has worn glasses since the age of six. Got my first pair at the end of September 1990. Currently my prescription is -8.00 OS, -7.75 OD - I'm unable to see clearly without them beyond about four and a half inches in front of my face. I pretty much only take them off to shower, swim and sleep. It essentially precludes me from wearing sunglasses unless they have prescription lenses, but I've managed to get around that by paying extra to have Transitions lenses in my glasses. Between the Transitions and the need to have high-index lenses (because otherwise I end up with ridiculously thick and heavy lenses) my glasses tend to cost an absolute fortune, but it's a small price to pay for clear vision.

This troper can't see anything without her lenses. Her glasses are old, and their prescription isn't exactly up to date, so she can't see with them. It's gotten to the point where she's adopted the horrible habit of sleeping with her contacts in so she doesn't have to blindly stumble to the bathroom in the morning.

Without my glasses, I'm a bumbling, nearsighted (-7.5/7) wreck, and my BlindingBangs (that normally serve as no hindrance whatsoever) attempt to stab my eyes out. I can't see more than a handsbreadth in front of me clearly, and I squint uncontrollably. Images turn to blobs of color that swallow each other, and if I forget where I put them or they get swept under something, I just sit and wait for someone else to find them since I physically ''cannot'' find them again, ever.