The first time I remember hearing about a glass eye was when my family was sitting around the old rotbox watching Columbo one post-dinner, 70’s eve.
My mother, not one to let a physical anomaly slip by unannounced, said something along the lines of: “I don’t know how he ever made it as an actor with that glass eye,” as if having one somehow hindered Peter Falk from, well, mumbling through his lines.
In any case, at the mention of his glass eye, I sat right up: Glass whaaaa….?
My mom pointed out how one eye always remained static and dead looking in the man’s face. In my mind’s own non-glass eye, I imagined that said prosthetic peeper was like a big, milky marble with a faux pupil and iris in it and I immediately wanted one, wanted a whole bag of them, to be sure.
Some unrelated time later, my dad told the story of the rubber shrunken head he’d had hanging from the rear-view mirror of one of his early cars and how he’d carved out slots in the noggin to permit him to insert a pair of eerie glass eyes into it, perfecting the thing’s effect to such a degree that, shortly thereafter, it was stolen.
Where had he gotten the glass eyes, I asked? There was a factory in the town he grew up in (Spokane?) that made them. A certain amount of the glass eyes were defects and these they discarded. According to him, you could go out behind the place and find said rejects pretty easily.
Oh. My. God. Here was my dad, growing up in a town where they threw free glass eyeballs out the back of a factory to children, and all I had was huge waterfall. I felt totally neglected.
So, pretty much, I grew up subconsciously dying to own a glass eye. 
Well, let me clarify: I wanted *someone else’s* glass eye; I was never too keen on needing one of my own. Even after I learned that a glass eye wasn’t a marble but, rather, shaped more like half an oyster shell, I wanted to add (at least) one to my collection of found objects and odd crapola. Now, in my 43rd year, I finally managed to find one at a local antique and collectibles store.
The tag said “prostetic (sic) eye” but they weren’t fooling me – I knew what it was, and that was all she wrote. I suppose I could’ve found one earlier on ebay or some such but, you know, stumbling across it unlooked for was a hell of a lot more fun and thus special.
Here’s looking at you!
