We lived in a little green house just down from the High School in small town America.  I must have only been eight and I will never forget the first time I wore them; glasses flipped a switch on for me.  I sat on our neighbour’s porch swing marvelling at the lines in the brick wall of the school.  Swaying on the swing, I tipped my head back and look into the trees.  No one had ever told me you could make out the individual leaves on the branches from that far away… Who would have known!!  I think the world had been blurry for me since the day I was born but I hadn’t realised it until that moment.  I can still remember how excited I was that day, and how happy I was.  It was like I had been freed from some sort of blur-bubble.  My world had grown by at least 20 fold. The headaches stopped that day too.  I could actually make it through the Lawrence Welk Show AND Hee Haw (Where, oh where, are you tonight?), sitting way back on the couch with my Grandpa and not have to go to bed crying with a headache. I actually knew what Mrs Crawford was talking about when she was pointing and tapping her stick on the chalk board, and it didn’t even bother me when the boys called me 4-eyes!  I could see!!!

Other kids I knew had glasses.  Other kids had cheated on their school eye test to get them.  Other kids had worn their glasses for about a week before the novelty wore off.  Other kids mothers had to nag them to wear their glasses.  But not this astigmatism-afflicted child!  No.  Not me.  I never once had to be reminded to wear my glasses.  I could SEE!!

From the day I got them, my first waking reflex was to reach for my specs, pop them on my nose and face my world.  A wonderful crisply-sharp world that was now alive with spectrum of colour.  I could see!!

In the seventh grade I was told by Chuck McCauley that I was the only girl in the school that wore glasses that was cute… I was relieved that the most popular boy in our class thought I was cute, but to be honest, I was of the mind that even if no one thought I was cute, I still wouldn’t give up my specs!  I could see!!

In the 9th grade I tried contacts.  I persevered for at least six months but the only contacts available for my wonky-shaped eyeballs were hard gas-permeable lens.  They were a blue colour and when I wore them my normally hazel-flecked green eyes went an remarkable green shade, which was nice, but the whites of my eyes went just as bright red.  I eventually abandoned them and stuck to my ever progressive, style changing glasses. 

I’ve worn the large eye shadow-tinted lenses (with my initials on them) that had frames with the leg that took the angled dip and joined the glasses at the bottom of the lens circle.  I’ve worn the little round gold-rimmed John Denver type frame.  I’ve had the Clark Kent preppy frames.  Then moved on to the next and the next and the next.  Never has a day gone by where I forgot my glasses; I have never lost them and almost never had them broken worse than a screw falling out.  I could see!!

But…