little four eyes

Yesterday morning as we were heading in to church, the usher looked at Zoe’s glasses and asked if they were Sarah Palin glasses.  Wait, what?  Umm, no?  I was so thrown by the question that I just smiled awkwardly and hurried to a seat.  I still have no idea what the point of the question was.  (As an aside, Bright Eyes News has a post about Palin’s glasses just in case you need to know more)

I’ve been thinking about people’s responses to young kids in glasses, and I think it has a lot to do with just how common glasses are on adults.  Everyone knows someone who wears glasses, and everyone knows (or thinks they know) why people wear glasses.  But as common as they are for adults, they’re extremely uncommon for kids (I need to look up actual numbers at some point).  So there’s this weird confluence of the unusual aspect of glasses on a little one + people’s assumptions that they know what the glasses are for that leads to people feeling comfortable commenting on it.  Maybe.

Still doesn’t explain the Sarah Palin comment.