Considering how many real obstacles teen-agers are forced to confront, why would they want to add unnecessary evils to the list?

According to a panel of “expert teen observers,” one of the hottest fashion trends sweeping the youth market is the wearing of large, black-rimmed eyeglasses that make you look like a nerd.

“And you don’t have to need them,” the teen experts chirp.

Now, I am more than willing to accept the other back-to-school trends being touted these days. I can make peace with ceramic skull earrings dangling from pubescent lobes. The same with the voodoo-eyeball jewelry that threatens to appear in schools across America. I promise not to wince if I see teen-agers scuffing around in bell-bottoms and desert boots, which was an ugly look in the 1960s and promises to be no more flattering in its inexplicable resurrection.

And when the pet stores begin selling out of pythons, and lines form out the door to buy piranhas, groupers and other “aggressive fish,” as the teen experts predict they will, I won’t shake my head and ask what the younger generation is coming to. I’ll know it’s all in fun.

By virtue of their age, teens are continually in conflict. Scientists might explain it this way: hormones and rage cause pimples, pimples cause rage, and rage causes teen-agers to buy aggressive fish.

It makes sense, in a strange way. But I cannot understand the desire to wear eyeglasses when you don’t need them. I read recently that optometrists were being inundated by youngsters with 20/20 vision who, nonetheless, wanted prescriptions for glasses.

What next? Gnarly neck braces? Hip hearing aids? Dentures for that big date?

I suspect that this screwy trend comes from California, a cultural force to be reckoned with. Californians have taught adults to be laid back and sensitive and supportive. They gave us the now famous “een” qualities to live by, such as being “nurture-een,” and “care-een,” and “share-een,”

California made a generation of American youngsters, like, talk funny. Now it’s got them panting over large, black-rimmed, eyeglasses that make them look like nerds.

Until recently, glasses used to make youngsters self-conscious. Now they make them feel fashion-conscious. If you got your first pair of glasses years ago as a teen-ager, think back to the moment you were told you needed them. Recall the dread, the shame, the embarrassment.

For me, glasses were many things, but they were never cool.

I started squinting at the blackboard in the eighth grade. It gave me a mean, sinister appearance. My friends didn’t know I was nearsighted; they thought I was contemptuous of the teachers in the front of the room. One teacher, a tiny Italian woman, knew better. In class one day, she stared at me a moment and then blurted out, “Whassamattah? You having trouble seeing the board or what?”

When I got my first summer job at 13, mowing lawns for a landscaping company, my eyesight caused me occasionally to leave a narrow strip of grass uncut. My boss, a perfectionist and a coot, would stand beside me and point an arthritic finger into the distance and snarl, “See? See where you missed?” I could not see, but I said, “Yeah, sure. I’ll get it.” Then I’d wander out there with my growling mower and hunt everywhere for the overlooked blades of grass. After driving me home one day, the old coot remarked to my mother: “I think your son needs glasses.”

My friend, Jimmy, found out about my nearsightedness the hard way. I was a pitcher on my high-school baseball team, and he was my catcher. Behind the plate, Jimmy would flash his fingers between his legs to indicate what pitch I should throw. He’d flash a curve, I might throw a fastball. He’d ask for a fastball, I might snap off a curve.

Jimmy was the only catcher I knew who charged the mound against his own pitcher. I can still remember his words of advice during our little conferences out there: “You get your eyes checked or I’m gonna smash your face,” he’d say as he rubbed his swollen hand.

I gave in. I had my eyes checked and got my nerdy glasses, the only kind they sold back then. “They don’t look all that horrible,” my friends would say. I knew they were lying; I could see it in their eyes.

Over the years, I’ve repaired my share of bows and bridges with electrical tape, mopped up rain-soaked lenses, dabbed at fogged glass and plastic. All along I’ve dreamed of the day science will find a cure for my misshapened eyeballs and free me of glasses forever.

In my moments of fantasy, I imagine myself on a bridge over a river. I rip those hated frames from my face, toss them high into the air, and watch with perfect clarity as they disappear to the bottom.

Now that would be cool, indeed.