Big, Fat Faker

I get headaches all the time because I can’t see for shit. One day the VCB asked me to read a sign to him just across the road and I could not. He was astonished that I couldn’t see 100 yards. It was then I realized my persistent headaches were from poor vision.

I haven’t had my eyes checked since first grade. I read a lot, and sit for many hours at a computer, so it’s highly probable that my eyes have suffered some damage in 20 years. (I had to squint just now to read part of that sentence.) I have been saving up to get some decent frames and will be getting some glasses really, really soon, but I thought you might like to know why I haven’t done so until so many years later.

Back in first grade I was in private school and in a split class. Some of us were 1st graders, the other of us second graders. Janeane was in 2nd grade. She sat all the way across the class from me, always wearing the cutest turned-down socks with ruffles and these brown t-strap mary janes I totally adored. She had brown hair and was allergic to peanut butter and had the best handwriting in the class. You should have seen her capital Js. And Janeane wore glasses.

And so when I found myself at the optomitrist a little while later I cheated a bit on my eye exam. I fudged. I mean, I lied about how well I could see the items in the test. The doctor assured my mother I needed glasses and so we set to choosing frames and getting everything taken care of.

I proudly wore my new glasses into school that next day but found myself sick with nausea and dizzy by lunchtime. Naturally, the prescription was warping my prefectly fine vision and creating for me a humungous headache. Those glasses found their way onto my head, my backpack, my pocket and that is where they stayed. Until I accidentally broke them by sitting on them one afternoon. I’d taken them off and tucked them into my jeans. I heard them crack and started to cry. I hid the perfectly equal pieces, snapped right across the bridge.

It was only a day or two before Mom asked where they were. I fessed up to breaking them. I don’t remember if she was angry, but I do know I never got another pair of glasses. I figured my mother knew I was lying and didn’t bother with getting me new ones. Which was fine by me, I was embarassed by the entire ordeal.

When I was 21 or so I confessed to my mother that I’d faked my way through the eye exam to be like Jelly Only Janeane, and that the glasses hurt my head and that I was glad when they broke. Her face dropped and she looked sort of sad. She told me she’d felt guilty for years becuse she could barely afford the first pair of glasses and that she just couldn’t manage to buy me another pair. I thought she knew, when in fact she never suspected, instead guilt-ridden because she couldn’t buy me another pair.

I think I never considered that my eyes might be fucked up because of that whole ordeal. It is sort of a punishment for myself. I still feel like shit about it. But man, it will be nice to finally be able to see and everything. And not hurt all the time.

And I think I look good in specs.

Pictures, hopefully, forthcoming.