Part 1. I grew up and spent most of my life in a small border town in what was then known Czechoslovakia. Year 1970 was hardly the best year to be born in that country, but as a kid, I didn’t really feel it so much as there was no comparison. My mum wore glasses for myopia, I think about 5 diopters, so I was not troubled when during a mandatory health screening at the beginning of grade 1 I was prescribed glasses as well. They were not very strong at maybe -1.5D, but the physician recommended wearing them all the time. I remember to this day him saying “It is very likely that since he started with myopia so early he will need much stronger glasses in the future.” Back than there was very little choice for kids’ glasses, so in about a week after the exam, I put on my face pair of hideous greyish plastic glasses, at least they were free thanks to communist version of NHS. Thanks to my mum, I didn’t mind wearing glasses until I came to classroom with them for the first time. I became target of teasing and bullying immediately. The teacher moved me to the first row (which was actually weird custom: in later years everyone with glasses had to sit in the first row, even if the whole point of wearing glasses is to be able to see even from the last row) next to only other bespectacled pupil in my class, quiet gypsy girl called Erika with very strong plus glasses and bifocals. It took quite some time before I taught the bullies to leave not only me, but Erika as well, alone, sometimes I had to use even my fists, so before the end of grade 1 my glasses looked like Harry Potter’s, all bent, broken a put together using glue. But at the end of holiday break before grade 2 I had another exam and was prescribed stronger lenses which were fortunately put to new frames (again hideous). From 1977 it became a tradition to go for an exam in the last week of August and go to school with brand new and stronger pair. But stronger myopia ment that I had to deal with another weird custom of our educational system in the seventies and eighties: during PE we were forced to put down our glasses and do sports bare-eyed. It was only minor issue with -1.5D, bigger isssue with -2.5D and by the time I was in grade 5 with -5D, it was absolutely ridiculous. We played a lot of dodge ball during PE classes, so I usually just stand on the side and waited till I was hit in the face with the ball and was allowed to go sit down. It was even worse for Erika, who without her glasses was terribly crosseyed. The only sport I was able to do without glasses was running on a circuit next to the school. And running actually saved me from further embarassment in PE, even if not in a desirable way. On November morning while running on the circuit I had an asthma attack and after some pressure from my mum, I was relieved from PE indefinitely. It was not a rare event in our school, due to terrible polution I think about third of my classmates had asthma to some degree and pretty much all of them coughed during whole winter. I remeber walking to and from school with handkerchief over my mouth and nose on especially dirty days (little did I know about mandatory medical masks and covid in 2020/1 ).
https://vision-and-spex.com/growing-up-with-myopia-t2014.html