Thick & Thin

I was ten when I finally admitted that I couldn't see properly. I suppose it happened so gradually that I was able to deny there was a problem for quite some months. Reading books wasn't an issue, and taking in the bigger picture wasn't so bad. The difficulty I had was in focusing on detail at a distance, realising that I was no longer able to see clearly what was written on the blackboard from where I sat at the back of the class (and moving to the front wasn't an option). 

I hated the very thought of having to wear glasses. There was a stigma attached to being a 'four-eyes' and school children could be quite mean about any physical defects among their fellows. So I kept the truth to myself for as long as I could, squinting and pretending all was fine until one day my teacher, Miss Harris, rumbled me and we had a quiet chat.

I got really stressed about how I would tell my parents. After months of my pretending there was nothing wrong with my eyesight. it was like owning up to a big deceit. I can still remember sitting in the kitchen with my mum that evening and saying, as nonchalantly as I could, "Mum, I can't read the writing on the blackboard at school very clearly. I really have to squint." "Well, we must get your eyes tested then." It was as simple as that, no drama, just an appointment at the optician's. Within a week I was diagnosed as short-sighted and the week after that I had my first pair of national health specs..

How I hated them. They were those standard issue NHS glasses with thick round lenses and thin wire frames. My parents wouldn't (or maybe couldn't) let me have anything more stylish. I thought the glasses were horrible - this was a few years before John Lennon made them trendy and acceptable - and wearing them was a badge of shame for a ten year old, but they certainly sorted my short-sighted problem. 

To begin with, I only used to wear them in class and refused to at all other times. Naturally I got teased and called the inevitable names. I even tried losing them once, but the case had my address inside and a kindly old couple brought them to the house. 

One time my parents took us out for a surprise trip and my dad said I should bring my glasses. I refused to do so. At the cinema, everything was just a blur! I thought it was mean of them not to divulge where we were going. If they'd explained, I would have at least taken my specs with me. I suppose they thought they were teaching me a lesson, but I resented them quietly for some days. 

Of course, after a few months I took to wearing my national health glasses all the time. I won't say through thick and thin, because that's too obvious. Although they did still get me picked on (as I'll relate shortly), eventually the nuisance of not being able to see as well without them as with them was the determining factor.

The worst that ever happened was when I got picked on by some American children who lived in the next street to us in Peterborough. They were the sons and daughters of servicemen connected to the US Air Force squadrons located at nearby RAF Alconbury. For a variety of reasons, the English didn't much like the Americans after the second world war. Maybe the Americans sensed that. I personally had nothing against them, but those children in the next street could be arrogant and brattish. There were stand-offs and there was name calling and there was an occasion when I got stones thrown at me, one of which cracked a lens on my glasses. 

When I told my dad what had happened, he sent me round to complain to the parents of the child (Buzz, or Chuck or some such) who had been responsible. The crew-cut father of Buzz or Chuck just laughed when I told him why I was there and said "Tell your father to come and see me himself if he's got a problem." I reported back faithfully and as far as I'm aware there was no follow up. Was I being taught another lesson? I've no idea. 

Anyway, the lens was replaced and I continued to wear my little, round NHS specs into my early teens, until such time as  I had a paper round and could save up to buy some decent frames. They made me look more like Brains from Thunderbirds, just as John Lennon was starting to sport the NHS look that I had loathed. And that unsavoury encounter with brattish American kids informs this latest poem.

Spectacle

Pebble dashed lens

fractured optic

a line jagged in the quartz.

He might have played David

though I was not Goliath,

Myopia no country for boys.

I knew nothing of reading stones

or how Abbas ibn Firnas

eurekad colourless glass.

But I did know brattish bullying

when I saw it

even through one corrected eye.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)