CALGARY – After wearily setting her fingerprint-laden glasses on the table in front of her, Mikayla Petersen sighed and remembered a point in time when she didn’t have to wipe her lenses down every 15 minutes.

“It was a different, much simpler world,” Petersen reminisced, “Everything looked so crisp and clear. There was hope.”

On April 24th, 2007, Petersen miraculously avoided accumulating any particulate matter on her glasses for an entire hour. Since then, the adherence of airborne contaminates to her freshly cleaned lenses has been instantaneous.

“It has been a long harrowing decade,” said Petersen while running her glasses under a tap, “I often have to decide whether to forgo vision or attempt to see past a Jackson Pollock-esque smattering of dust, sebum, and water streaks.”

Petersen has been known to aggressively demand bespectacled peers if she “could get in on that action” when one of them pulls out a microfibre cloth and cleansing spray. At her lowest point, she was seen grabbing at the undershirt of a colleague. “I thought maybe their cotton-blend tank would help get out these damn smears,” Petersen explained sheepishly.

When asked about switching to contact lenses, a disgusted Petersen said she would never be caught touching her eyeballs.