Last weekend I broke one of the nose pads on my glasses. My husband bought replacements for me when he put in an Amazon order, and they arrived quickly. In the meanwhile, I took the pads off some old glasses for spares, so it wasn’t a problem.

When the new nose pads arrived, I was very surprised at how different they were from the old ones. I last bought glasses in October of 2019, so it wasn’t like they were ancient. But the new pads were thick and soft, with some sort of gel cushioning, whereas the old pads were nothing but hard plastic. I stopped by an optical shop to get my glasses adjusted because the extra thickness pushed them higher, and it took me a little time to get used to the pads not being in the same place on my nose; but I feel much more comfortable now.

Of course, I would’ve bought cushy nose pads long ago if I had known they existed—but I just assumed my glasses had to be equipped with bits of hard plastic digging into my nose because that was what I’d always had. As a general rule, I try not to make limiting assumptions or get stuck in unhelpful habits, but sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know.