Four Eyes (and Other Witty Sobriquets)

My daughter may need glasses.

Okay, so it's not the worst thing that ever happened, but I guess it's the first time my husband and I have had to accept that the genes we provided weren't the first-rate set we'd have liked.

She's in pre-school. Her eye turns in a bit sometimes, and we've noticed that in pictures, the red-eye syndrome only occurs in one eye. So, either she's only HALF possessed by demons, or there's an uncooperative eye in the family. Or very likely both.

Actually, there are quite a few uncooperative eyes in the family. Most of them are mine. I've had bad vision from the get-go, which is one reason I'm pained by my daughter's impending doom. I mean, life with corrective lenses.

In Kindergarten, I was diagnosed with "lazy eye." I'm not sure how they figure that out, as I HAVE a kindergartner living in my house now, and they're pretty much lazy about EVERYTHING (especially putting things away, but in general, anything that requires effort.) Furthermore, the problem with selective vs. impaired HEARING is much more pronounced at this age. My point being, you really have to be paying attention to pick up vision problems at this age.

At the ripe old age of five, I got my first pair of glasses. Which I hated. Almost as much as I hated the very un-cool patch I had to wear while my weak eye did push-ups, and got in prison brawls. Yes, I got the "pirate" pep talk. Even at five, I didn't buy it. Pirates get to switch the patch to the other eye any time they feel like it. Everybody knows that! Plus they get to wear jewelry (never too early for that one, I guess.)

With the white-hot passion of a five-year-old, I hated those glasses. They were purple. Well, the FIRST pair was purple. The second was green, and if memory serves, the third pair was tortoise shell. That was the first week. I won't bother trying to convince you that I lost them in the sandbox. No. I actually left them in the road for cars to run over.

Unfortunately for me, my Dad was in the spectacles biz, and had ordered a baker's dozen of the horrid things. He knew me better than I knew myself.

I was saddled for life. What's worse, I was (am) horribly far-sighted, so through the coke-bottles, I looked like my eyes were as big as my whole face. Like an owl. And "Owl" was about the nicest name I was called, growing up.

Four-eyes. Monkey face. Four-eyed-monkey-face (kids are really creative.) The brain. Susie specks. Big eyes. Oh, it was a veritable smorgasbord of witty nicknames.

Ten years later (that would be about 250 pairs, more or less) some poor berated and tortured soul invented contact lenses, and I was saved. Didn't matter that I had to poke pieces of glass in my eye, and sterilize nightly in a machine roughly the size of an iron lung. I was in heaven.

It's all behind me now. I have my emergency back-up glasses for contact lens emergencies and birth control purposes. But to the casual observer, I no longer qualify under the "four-eyed-monkey-face" demographic. I even lied on my driver license. To the DMV, I'm just your average 35-year-old with no major felonies, deformities, or immediately available organs. It's just like "Gattica!"

Now my daughter could be facing this same grim, name-calling path, and I may have to summon my best "maternal lie" face (the one I used at the DMV) to try and convince her that glasses are cool. Pirates are cool, too. Even when they can't switch the patch back and forth. Pirates eat dessert before dinner sometimes. And they get to wear bead necklaces to school. Just because they're pirates.

And since it's my nickel now, I'm planning on watching her every twitch in the driveway.