Harry's glasses: Protection?

[meriaugust]

No: HPFGUIDX 115404


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Kethryn" <kethryn at w...> wrote:
snip 
> Of course, since I bear that particular burden, I can sympathize 
and relate to Harry a lot.  I do tend to wonder, however, why they 
don't call him "four eyes" ~represses a shudder from the horrid 
memories that particular phrase conjures up...
> 
> Again, speaking as a myopic person, I got my glasses in the third 
grade (both my parents have myopia as well) so I always took it for 
granted that Harry would have gotten them at about the same time.  
That means he would have been about...uhhh math is so not my strong 
suit...8 I think.  So 8 to 11, three years to get used to it but 
lessee for me it's been contacts/glasses for 20 years and I am still 
not used to it.

Meri: There was posting on this subject a while back, and someone 
from the UK informed me that there is eye screening and free glasses 
for kids entering school (am I right?), so his eye problem could 
have been caught at a much younger age, say four or five. But I'm 
not sure what point you are trying to make that he hasn't gotten 
used to them? I got my own pair of glasses at four (no contacts for 
me) I am now in my twenties and I can't remember a time when I 
wasn't used to them. 
 
> Circling back to the original point, though, I do think that his 
glasses emphasize his vulnerability, especially as he has not yet 
had his glasses long enough to learn to ignore the debilitating 
effects, to set aside that particular vulnerability...

Meri: What debilitating effects is he ignoring? That he can't see 
without them? IIRC Harry has woken up in the hospital wing several 
times and instantly known he was without his specs. He's also nearly 
lost them in CoS after the Floo travelling and needed them to be 
waterproofed during Quidditch. I think he is well aware of them.

>but it is odd that he is not all that self-conscious of having 
>glasses...I still am and I am an adult, for crying out loud.

Meri: Harry's just an average kid. He's got glasses, and to me that 
makes him far more average. We didn't get to see Harry at all in 
primary school, but again IIRC Harry's thoughts at the end of 
Chapter 2 in SS tell us that he had no friends at school because no 
one wanted to disagree with Dudley's gang and befriend that weird 
Harry Potter with his baggy clothes and glasses. But at Hogwarts 
he's got plenty else to be concerned about. And let's face it, if 
you're Draco Malfoy do you make fun of Harry because he's got specs, 
or because he's friends with Weasley's and muggleborns, faints at 
the sight of Dementors, nearly swallows golden snitches and has to 
take remidial potions? 

Meri - who over the last sixteen years has gotten to love my 
glasses, so much so that I won't get contacts...I don't look right 
without me specs and neither does Harry!