I was sitting at a table in a combination bar and restaurant having my dinner when a young lady came in and sat down at a table across the room. I was intrigued, more by the strong glasses she wore than by the fact that she was a fairly attractive lady. All my life I have had a soft spot for ladies that are more than mildly myopic, and this girl certainly fit the bill, although she was much closer to being an extreme myope from the thickness and the amount of cut in that her lenses showed. I slowed my food intake and watched her without making it terribly obvious that that I was scoping her out. She finished her meal and ordered another drink. What I thought had been a bloody Mary turned out to have been a virgin one so she was not drinking to forget. When her drink came she paid her bill and then walked over to a dart board. She took all the darts and then proceeded to throw them all at the board. She wasn’t hampered by her strong glasses as most of her throws landed pretty close to the middle. I watched for a while longer and was enthralled by the way the light in the bar danced across the fronts of her thick lenses. It was obvious that some of her very high prescription was ground into the slightly biconcave front surfaces of her lenses. I finished my own dinner and went over to stand where I could watch her better. She threw another round of darts and again they all landed close to the center. After the final dart hit the board she turned and looked right at me. “You want to throw a few mister?” “Sure - if it is just for fun.” I replied. “Well, that is not much fun. I was hoping to at least have a small wager here.” She answered. “You are far out of my league. I would need a handicap to play you for money.” I said. “You can see I am half blind. Isn’t that handicap enough?” She asked. “I have been watching you. You are damned good, and I don’t think you need a handicap at all. How about we play one game and then we can talk about a wager.” I told her. She agreed, and we played one game. She beat the pants off me and I told her a wager was out of the question. She laughed, and agreed to play on with no money involved. I did have a bit of luck and managed to win 2 out of the 5 games we threw. After game 5 I offered to buy her a drink, so we went to the bar and she got another Virgin Mary. I ordered a rum and coke and we sat down at a table near the dart board. We made small talk for a while and I found out that her name was Lisa, she was 26 years old, had lived in the city for all of her life, and had a twin sister and a younger brother. She was a teacher at a nearby junior high and she enjoyed her work. She mentioned that she was not going with anyone at the moment and I told her I would very much like to take her out to dinner Friday evening. “Is this where you ask me if I ever wear contact lenses?” Lisa asked. “Actually I could care less if you ever wear contacts or not. I think you look very good wearing glasses and since you see quite well wearing them I can’t see any reason why you would want to go to the bother of wearing contacts.” I replied. “You are a strange one Dave. Most of the guys I meet can’t wait to get me talked into wearing contact lenses as well as into bed.” Lisa said. “I just happen to be one of those guys that happens to like the looks of a girl who wears glasses. And as far as talking you into going to bed with me, I suppose that if you want it to it will likely happen somewhere along the line.” I answered. “Good answer Dave. I did try contacts back when I was in high school, but I didn’t like wearing them. I would much rather wear glasses. And regarding your invitation, I would be pleased to go out to dinner with you. But I would rather pick up my own check if you don’t mind.” Lisa responded. I didn’t argue with her. I figured she didn’t want to feel obligated to me in any way, but she did enjoy my company so she was willing to take things a step further. I had told her that I had been transferred to the city by my company, and that I would likely be here for quite a while. She knew I had just turned 30, and a 4 year difference in age was quite acceptable. She had seemed both surprised and relieved with my answer that I liked the looks of a girl who wore glasses so I supposed that she had some past issues with guys that didn’t care for her glasses. I picked Lisa up Friday evening around 7. She lived with her parents in a rather nice looking home in a nearby suburb and when I went to the door to ring the bell she answered immediately. She didn’t introduce me to any of her family, and we just went over to my car, where I held the door open for her to get in. I went around to the driver’s side and got in myself, but before I started the car I told her she looked lovely. And I was not lying in any way. To me Lisa looked gorgeous. Maybe her thick glasses would be a turn off to most other guys, but to me they were just the icing on a cake. All my life I have been attracted to myopic, glasses wearing ladies. Maybe I would have chosen a girl that wasn’t quite as nearsighted, because Lisa’s glasses were obviously very strong and the thickness was more than I had ever seen on the face of a beautiful lady. But since my search for a myopic girlfriend had not been very fruitful until now I was just going to accept this lady as being perfect for me. We had a great meal, and I enjoyed Lisa’s company a lot. I didn’t know the city very well, and I asked Lisa if there were any attractions she would like to show me if she was free the following day. She asked if I had been to the museum, and I told her that I hadn’t had a chance to visit anything yet. So we decided that since Lisa liked the museum a lot, I would take her there. I agreed to pick her up mid-morning and I told her that since she was going to be my tour guide the museum would be on me. By the end of Saturday I was head over heels in love and I was pretty sure Lisa also liked me a lot. The next few months flew by in a flash. Lisa was the perfect girl for me. Without her glasses she was very attractive, but of course her glasses very seldom left her face. Her hair was a light brown, and she wore it long and straight. Sometimes the hair that hung to one side slid down and obstructed the one lens of her glasses, but she always brushed it back and away from her face. She had a pretty decent chest size, a great rear end and really shapely legs. I told her she could easily have been a model, and her reply to that was “Yeah, if I didn’t wear glasses.” I don’t know if she believed me or not when I told her that her glasses made her very appealing to me. We had gone together for almost 9 months when I asked Lisa to marry me. Her reply was that she really liked me, and she would like to marry me, but she had to tell me something first. I suggested that there wasn’t anything she could tell me that would make me change my mind, but she just said that I should ask her again after she told me her story. I had mentioned that Lisa had a twin sister, who was named Laura. I had met Laura, and her husband Grant and I liked them both very much. Laura also wore glasses sometimes, but her prescription was a lot weaker than Lisa’s and she wore contact lenses much of the time. Lisa started her story by telling me that when they were age 4 Laura was the one that had to get glasses. Apparently at that time Lisa’s eyes were very good. “I hated the fact that Laura had to wear glasses and I didn’t. I didn’t know why Laura needed glasses, because when I put her glasses on I could see just fine wearing them. Actually I remember that things looked a little smaller, and very clear when I wore them. There was nothing I couldn’t see with them on. But then when I took them off I could also see everything and it seemed strange to me when Laura would tell me that without her glasses things that I could see were fuzzy to her unless she walked right up close to them. I was jealous, and I wanted to wear glasses. But Laura hated her glasses and she didn’t want to wear them.” Lisa said as she started her tale. “A few months after she got her first glasses Laura broke them. She went for another eye exam, and when she came home she had stronger glasses. They had a 2 pairs for the price of one offer. Of course I wanted to wear her second pair, and I did wear them as much and as often as I possibly could. Mom and Dad saw me wearing glasses around a lot, but most of the time they just thought I was Laura. One time I made sure they caught both of us wearing glasses because I had talked Laura into going for another eye exam and pretending that she was me. When my parents asked why I was wearing Laura’s glasses I told them I could see a lot better with them on. Of course Laura, acting as Lisa, was prescribed glasses and now we could both wear glasses all the time. But there was a problem. Instead of choosing the same style frame that she already wore Laura chose a different frame, and now I had to wear stronger glasses than Laura did. Laura hated this because she couldn’t see as well with her own glasses as she could with mine, so after a month or so she told our parents that she needed stronger glasses. Laura got new, slightly stronger glasses, but I also had what I wanted. I was now a glasses wearer.” “Laura took her glasses off a lot. She never read with them on, and she would walk back and forth to school without wearing them. But I put mine on first thing in the morning and I didn’t take them off until it was time for bed. It didn’t take me very long before I knew what Laura was talking about when she told me that things looked fuzzy without her glasses. Now when I took my glasses off things did look very blurred. But I loved the feeling of putting my glasses back on and having the blur disappear. I had always read a lot. Most of my spare time was spent curled up with a book and I found that if I held my reading material very close to my face and read for a long time without looking at anything else my eyes were all blurry even with my glasses on. It would take a while before the blur would go away, and the more I read it seemed the longer it would take before the blur went away. When I was at school, if I was doing a lot of close work in class I could no longer see the chalkboard if I looked up at it briefly. By late afternoon it seemed to take at least 15 minutes of looking at things further away before I could see fairly clearly through my glasses. Laura’s glasses were a bit stronger than mine, and I could see a little better with them on. So I told my mom I couldn’t see very well with my glasses anymore and that resulted in my having another eye exam. I told the eye doctor that I could no longer read the board in class, and that at night things were really blurry. He made me look through a lot of different lenses and he kept asking me which one was better. I just kept telling him that it was better, but still not clear, and finally he reached a point where I could see all the letters on the chart. He made the lenses a little stronger, and then even stronger. I could still see the chart, but I was sure they were a bit too strong. I wasn’t going to say anything though, because I loved the feeling.” “I was now 6 years old and I was in grade 1. My new glasses were the same prescription as my age, and I was very proud of the fact that my glasses were a lot thicker than my sister’s. There was a girl named Heather who was in grade 3 that had glasses that were even thicker than mine and when the other girls were playing baseball at recess Heather, Laura, and I were not allowed to play because we could not see well enough to take our glasses off. Heather and I went to the library for recess and after we had finished our lunch in the cafeteria. One day I asked Heather if we could trade glasses. She told me that hers would be way too strong for me, but she agreed to let me try hers. She could see well enough to read with my glasses on, and to my surprise I managed to force my eyes to see well enough through her glasses that I could even read with them on. This went on for a few weeks, but Heather got tired of me wearing her glasses. One day she brought her old glasses to school with her and she told me that I could wear them, but if she broke her own glasses I needed to give them back. I loved them. I wore them all day in school, and when I was at home I would wear them in my room when I was reading or doing homework. Laura and I each had our own room, so Laura didn’t know what I was doing. It didn’t seem to take very long before I could no longer see well through my own glasses. And now, when I traded glasses with Heather, which we did once in a while, I could see extremely well though her newer glasses. I asked Heather is she had a copy of her most recent prescription, and she did. I was a little surprised I could see as well as I could through her newest glasses, because the prescription read -11.00D for both eyes. She gave me the prescription slip and told me where she had gotten her glasses so that I didn’t make the mistake of going to the same optical store where she had gotten her glasses.” “I had saved quite a bit of money from my allowance so I took all my money and Heather’s prescription to another optical store. I was wearing Heather’s old glasses, so they did not question the fact that my existing glasses were not anywhere close to -11D. I chose a frame that I liked, and then I ordered the thinnest lenses that I could get in Heather’s prescription. I made note of the name of the frame and all the necessary information and then I went to another optical store near our house. They had the same frame I had just bought and when I went home I told my mom I needed my eyes checked again because things had gotten all fuzzy again. My own prescription had increased to -8.50D and my mom and I went to the optical store where I had found the same frame I had bought with Heather’s prescription. We ordered my new glasses and mom paid for them. They were cheaper than the glasses I bought, but that was because mom had ordered regular plastic lenses. When I went to the other optical store to pick up the glasses with Heather’s prescription in them I was almost disappointed because they looked really thin and I wanted my glasses to be thicker. I loved these glasses though. Everything seemed to be so much sharper than when I put on the other glasses Heather had loaned me. My own glasses were ready to be picked up and when I saw them I was a little worried that my glasses with Heather’s prescription would have thinner lenses. Maybe they did a little, but unless you put the glasses side by side no one could notice. I never did wear the new glasses with my own prescription in front of anybody except for when mom and I drove home from the optical store. I immediately changed to the -11D glasses and I wore them from that day on.” By that time Laura and I had turned 7. Laura had to have another eye exam, and her glasses were just a little stronger than the ones she had been wearing. She tried my new glasses on, and could not believe my eyes were so bad. She still hated wearing her glasses, and she was determined she would get contact lenses as soon as she possibly could. I loved having the same prescription in my glasses as Heather did because now we could trade glasses; which we did from time to time. By the time I was 8 my eyes had completely adapted to the -11D prescription. Once that happened I was then able to start bringing everything much closer to my eyes. But I had not been able to make things blurry until shortly after I had my 9th birthday. Gradually things off in the distance became a little fuzzy and I knew I was going to have to have another eye exam soon. I was worried that my eye doctor would find out that my glasses were not the prescription he had prescribed for me, but since I had the -8.50D glasses I would put them on and go for my eye exam. That was the right thing to do because I would have gotten caught otherwise, but I could not figure out how I would survive that day in school waiting for mom to pick me up. Finally I decided I would have to put my -8.50D glasses in my backpack and I would have to wear the -11D ones to school all day. Then just before mom picked me up I would change to my -8.50D ones. That almost didn’t work because I could not see well enough to see mom’s car in the school driveway, but fortunately Laura was going to have another eye exam as well, so I just followed Laura to the car.” “Our eye doctor was horrified that my eyes had gotten so bad. My new prescription was going to have to be -12.50D. He wanted mom to take we to someone he called an ophthalmologist that could examine my eyes and see if there were any serious problems. I wasn’t too thrilled about that because I was afraid that a specialist could tell that I had been making my eyes worse myself. But it was going to take over 6 months before I could get an appointment and I couldn’t help myself. My new glasses seemed to be too weak a couple of months after I first put them on, and I told my mom. She took me back to the same eye doctor and he had to order new lenses to put in my frames. Mom had originally ordered regular plastic for the -12.50D glasses and now my free -13.50D lenses in the regular plastic were really thick. I loved my appearance now, but I couldn’t stop myself. I still wanted thicker glasses so I kept up my practice of bringing my eyes as close to everything I was reading as I had been doing. And I spent as much time reading as possible.” “I was almost 10 when it was time for my appointment with the specialist in high myopia. I knew my eyes were a little bit worse because things in the distance had started to look burred again. The ophthalmologist was a really nice lady. She had be sit in a chair next to her desk, she put some drops in my eyes, and then she left the room. I couldn’t see a thing because she had taken my glasses and placed them on her desk. When she came back a few minutes later she looked into my eyes with all sorts of things, and then she made this thing go puff into my eye and she put something right on my eyeball. She had me put my chin on a special place on a machine with my forehead against a bar at the top and then she looked into each eye with a very strong lens that she held in her hand. After she finished all this stuff she guided me over to the chair like I usually sat in at my own eye doctor and she did the normal is this better stuff with the lenses. Then she gave me my glasses back and she took me to another lady who put me in front of another machine and I had to guess where the little asterisks were on the machine. It was really hard because they were everywhere and I only had a second to click the button when I saw it. I guess I clicked the button lots of times at the wrong time, but when I told the lady she said that didn’t matter. After that she took lots of pictures of the inside of my eye.” “I got a new prescription from the lady at the front desk and she made another appointment for us to come back in 2 weeks. My eyes had not gotten much worse, as the new prescription only read -14.25D for both eyes. But still, this had happened in only 5 months. Mom took me to the optician on the way home, and we ordered another new pair of glasses with my new prescription. I didn’t think my old prescription was too weak, but a week later when my new glasses were ready I was surprised that everything looked so clear again. Then the following week mom took me back for a meeting with the lady ophthalmologist. She told mom and I that there was nothing wrong with my eyes except that my eyes, which should be round like a soccer ball, had been growing longer from front to back, more like a football. She did explain that my eyes were now severely shortsighted, and that it was quite possible that I had progressive myopia, which meant that I would become more and more shortsighted as I grew older. I would have to have my eyes monitored to ensure that I did not develop any of the problems associated with high myopia such as lattice degeneration, which could lead to retinal detachments. And I was at a high risk to develop wet macular degeneration, which generally started with bleeding behind the macula and was a very serious problem. But at the moment my eyes were very healthy. She wanted me to start on a clinical trial in which they would put drops in my eyes every week of something that was supposed to slow the elongation of my eyeballs, and mom agreed to bring me in after school every Tuesday to have this done. I was also told that I could never play contact sports and while I could play sports such as baseball it would be necessary for me to wear prescription sports glasses as well as a helmet. I didn’t care if I ever played sports though. She told me that with monitoring my severe myopia should give me no problems so I was happy. She checked my vision with my new glasses, and pronounced my vision as being 20/20 with correction.” “The weekly drops didn’t cause any problems for me. I did notice that even though I had not changed any of my habits of reading too close and for too long at a stretch my glasses seemed just perfect for me for a much longer period of time. I went a little over 2 years of wearing the -14.25D glasses before I noticed things were getting blurry again. And even then when I got my new glasses when I was 12 years old my prescription had only climbed to -15.50D. My pediatric ophthalmologist was very pleased about this, and I have to admit I was as well. She had scared me a little with what she had told me before we started on the weekly eye drop treatments.” “Do you know what your friend Heather’s progression was?” I asked. “I haven’t seen Heather for a few years. We met when I was 6 and she was 9 and her prescription was already -11D. When I was 12 and had a prescription of -15.50D she was 15 and her prescription was -18D. She had a couple of big jumps when she entered puberty, and I am pretty sure by the time she was 19 and went off to college she was a bit over -20D. I also had a couple of pretty good increases when I was between 14 and 16 and even with the drops I had increased to -22.50D by the time I was 17. Then I went back to having smaller increases again. I was only going up -1D every couple of years and now my prescription is right around -27D. I don’t think that is too bad as I am only 1D stronger for my glasses than my age.” “So what is it that you want to tell me that would not make me want to marry you?” I asked Lisa. She looked at me rather incredulously and then she said, “I have ruined my eyes by what I have done to myself over the years. And even though I wear extremely strong glasses I still want to wear even stronger ones. I would love to get to at least -30D for my lenses. Does that not turn you off?” “Not really. The only thing that would bother me would be for you to tell me that you would want to do the same thing to any children that we have.” I replied. ‘I would never force my wishes on any of my children. I do have to admit to you that if we have children, if it is obvious that any of them want to wear glasses I would not be averse to helping them attain their goal though. But I would not do anything to any of our children unless you were in agreement. Would that be all right?” Lisa asked. “I can live with that. Now, will you agree to marry me?” I queried. This time Lisa agreed. We set the wedding date for 6 months in the future, and during that time we set up an apartment together. Lisa did have an eye exam shortly before the wedding and she got herself contact lenses to wear. Her twin sister Laura was going to be her bridesmaid, and Lisa didn’t want to wear her obviously thick glasses for all the wedding pictures, so since Laura wore contacts she decided she would as well. She did wear her -20D contacts for a few dates prior to the wedding, but she told me she had no interest in wearing contacts after we were married. Her old friend Heather was going to be one of her maids of honor. Heather had tried to wear contact lenses but she could not tolerate them and her -30D myodisc lensed glasses looked very nice on her. Lisa had told me that she hoped to get up to around -30D before her eyes stopped getting worse, and I wondered if she had actually seen Heather before she told me that. But when I asked her about that she assured me that she had not known that Heather wore -30D glasses until Lisa met her again soon after she agreed to be in the wedding party. The wedding was great. I loved looking at Heather wearing her -30D myodiscs and I couldn’t help but think that it would be fantastic if Lisa actually got to that prescription. Heather was an attractive young lady, although she was a little heavy for my taste. A little over a year after we were married Lisa gave birth to our son Kevin. During her pregnancy she told me her eyesight was deteriorating and she probably needed new glasses. But her eye doctor suggested that she should wait until well after the birth of the baby before she got new glasses as sometimes the myopia regressed to the former prescription. This didn’t happen in Lisa’s case so a few weeks after the baby was born Lisa got her new -29D glasses. This was only a -2D increase and I thought her new glasses looked as good on her as Heather’s -30D glasses had looked. Lisa still wanted to reach the -30D mark though, and I told her that this was almost certain to happen when we had our second child. I guess that is why Lisa started to want to get pregnant again shortly after Kevin was 9 months old. And she did get pregnant again. This time the ultrasound showed we were going to have a girl and we decided if the baby was born healthy we would take steps to ensure there were no more pregnancies. As I had suspected Lisa noticed her vision was getting worse shortly into the pregnancy. She wanted to get new glasses right away, and she did get her -30D glasses that she had always wanted. But by the time Ariel was born Lisa needed stronger glasses. She waited 3 months to see if her eyes would go back to being able to wear the -30D glasses that she loved, but they didn’t so after another eye exam she reluctantly ordered her new -32D myodiscs. Ever since her prescription reached around -25D she had worn myodiscs. When I met Lisa playing darts her -26D myodiscs had some of the curvature in the front of the lens, and her -30D glasses were significantly dished in on the front of the lens. But her -32D glasses had 2 circles. The one in the front of the lens was a little bigger than the one in the rear, but was not as deep so a lot more of the power was in the rear. I actually liked to looks of the double myodiscs a lot. By the time Ariel was 5 Lisa had needed a couple more increases in her prescription and she now wore the same double myodiscs, but in a -35D prescription. We had both noticed that Ariel seemed to be having a little difficulty with her vision and when Lisa asked me to take Ariel to the eye doctor I was not terribly surprised. Ariel ended up wearing glasses with a prescription of -2D which was rather a strong prescription for a 5 year old. I was sure that there would be a few more increases in Ariel’s future, but I hoped she would not experience as high a prescription as her mother had. Don’t get me wrong, as I absolutely loved seeing Lisa wearing the strong -35D double myodiscs, however I didn’t want my baby girl to develop the same affinity for myopia as her mom had. Specs4ever August 2017
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