Growing up, I loathed the fact that I wore glasses. It was a
curse that I just couldn’t break free of, not even during my high school years
when I could have probably switched to contacts. Nope, not me. I stuck with the
glasses.
I can still remember that faithful moment riding in the car
with my mom, when she discovered my issues with sight. I was eleven years old, maybe twelve. We were
on our way back from some unknown destination, waiting at a traffic light. I
don’t know how it came up, but Mama asked me to read the license plate of the
car stopped in front of us. It was no more than fifteen or twenty feet away. I
couldn’t do it.
Within a week, I was the proud owner of a brand-new pair of
glasses. Of course, I picked out the most fashionable worst pair
possible. They were blue with some kind of crazy pattern of purples, yellows,
and reds and the biggest, roundest lens you’ve ever seen. Nice and
inconspicuous. The perfect glasses for a preteen with major self-confidence
issues.
I guess at the time I thought they were pretty cool, but God
only knows why we make the fashion choices we do.
From the moment I put them on, I hated my glasses. I hated
being the girl with glasses. It seemed to define me…and not in a good way. My
classmates didn’t tease me over them like you might think. At least not to my
face. The real problem with my glasses is that when I put them on I felt
completely invisible. And as my school days lingered on, the feeling became
more of a reality.
In high school, I remained the girl with glasses. While my
classmates and friends graduated to contacts, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I gave up
after only a couple of tries at the eye doctor and resigned myself to spending
the rest of my days as Invisible Girl. And I wasn’t cool super-hero Invisible
Girl with magical powers. Nope, I was self-conscious, nervous, painfully shy
Invisible Girl with nothing going for me.
Or so I thought at the time.
Adding to my high school misery always were the taunting
words of Dorothy Parker:
“Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
And in my little town, that seemed to definitely be the
case. Of course, looking back it may be more true that boys don’t make passes
at girls who are invisible and always fade into the background…
Nevertheless, high school graduation finally rolled around,
and four years of being invisible and hating myself came to an abrupt end.
During the summer before college, I got contacts. I was determined to reinvent
myself in college and NOT be invisible, and if that meant being the girl
without glasses, then that’s who I would become.
My college days were much improved. Whoever says that high
school is the best time of your life is lying. Things typically get better. At
least they did for me. Without my glasses, I became more confident, more
outgoing. If glasses gave me anti-magical powers, then contacts did the exact
opposite. But if I’m being absolutely honest here, it probably wasn’t the lack
of glasses that made my college days so much better.
For one, college had a much more diverse population than
high school. There were more geeks like me. And more book nerds and word nerds.
A whole English department full of them in fact! I found my place among them,
still myself, still individual and probably still that girl with glasses
underneath it all…but reinvented! Comfortable with who I was and who I was
becoming. Finally.
The irony of this woeful tale? I’m now married to a man who
loves glasses. In fact, I sometimes think he prefers me with my glasses. And
so, here I sit, writing about how much I used to hate my glasses while wearing
a brand-spanking new pair of glasses that are a hundred times cuter than that
first pair. Thank God.
My husband is still sleeping in the next room. Today’s our fourth
anniversary.
Turns out, Dorothy Parker was wrong.
Do you wear glasses now? Did you as a kid? Were you teased or invisible? Or did you love wearing glasses?
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