“Is it better like this?” “Or Like this?” “Is it better green?” ” “Or is it it better red?” For a brain wired atypically that has always been the never answerable question. The optician a place filled with angst as my neurodivergent head struggled to find the right answer. The one without consequence. the one pre-approved by my skint single parent. #NowIKnow I’m autistic and an ADHDer things are easier. Well, the acceptance of the angst it causes is easier. Not the eye test. Still hate those. The sensory overload, the endless questions, the flashing lights, the laser spotting, the dread of an incoming varifocal bill completely unaffordable or the return of pencil exercises I never really got the hang of.

But back in those Essex days, for a kid determined somehow to find the right answer to their own questions, one thing was never in doubt. I knew the frames I fitted. And it was not the girl’s pink NHS obligatory choice. The Vintage Pink NHS “524” spectacles of dread, destined for my face, regardless of the single digit raised under my cuffs in the optician as the adults colluded together to get this “difficult” child (oh I have always been “too difficult”) to give in. But my non-binary core as yet unnamed dug in and battled hard for the glasses I wanted. The John Lennon round wonders – reserved for the lads apparently. My little female head unable to cope with the fashion statement? The sheer brute manliness of these supposed gendered glasses apparently not suited for a girl in year 4.

Thankfully there was one thing I excelled at as a child. The sulk. Oh how this “difficult” child could sulk and the threat of that, combined with that already unassailable sense of cold-hearted logic that determined my every thought delivered the reasoning that made sure I didn’t walk home pretty in pink. Lennon prevailed. Just. Until I broke them almost immediately on the way to school and the battle was lost to NHS 524 blue.

Fast forward twenty years and my first Lennons finally made it to the cliff face that was my grown nose. Gender-free, pencil test exercises complete, eyesight sound, future clear. Life as one half of the DJ equivalent of The Two Ronnies was a way off yet but the frame for my future was fixed. Lens adjusted, vision queer, non-binary frames forever mine. Finally. Right, back to the task at hand. “Red or green?” anyone? “Red or green?”