I generally take an almost instant dislike to girls with red hair. I just do not like the fiery red or even the carrot top red that most red heads have and as a result I have probably missed out on meeting some very nice girls. However, I still feel that I like a blonde, black, or brunette-haired girl, just not a redhead. I made that statement to my sister when I was around 14. I don’t know where my dislike for redheads came from, but I had felt that way for most of my young life. There were some things I really liked about a girl, one of which was if she wore glasses. As with the dislike for red hair, I had no idea where my appreciation of girls who wore glasses came from. I just knew I liked them. At that time, I was in junior high, and I had a couple of girls in my 9th grade class that wore glasses, and the one girl I liked the most wore what appeared to be a fairly thick pair of minus glasses because she was very nearsighted. She was slightly older than I was, and she was already 15 in January while I wouldn’t have my15th birthday until the beginning of May. I suppose the age difference wouldn’t have made a big difference if I had only found the courage to ask her out but having not dated yet I didn’t have a clue how to go about asking a girl to go out with me. The other girl was around my same age, with much thinner lenses in her glasses, but again I flubbed it by not having enough nerve to ask her out. My sister was 2 years younger than I was currently. At age 12 she was just starting to show signs of development and she had recently started having her period. I had no desire to hear about how unfair it was that girls had to lose their menstrual blood every month. Not my problem - leave me out of the discussions. My sister Corey had been named after my mother’s Aunt Cordelia. Cordelia, who we called Auntie, wore glasses, nice thick glasses for the correction of high myopia and I really liked those glasses, Corey was also very nearsighted and had been ever since she was about 3 years old, so she too wore glasses, but her glasses, while still obviously pretty strong, did not hold a candle to Aunt Cordelia’s glasses. No one in our family could figure out how our grandmother’s sister had passed on the myopia gene to my younger sister, but the strong glasses on my 12-year-old sister’s face were definitely not there just for show. Poor Corey was so shortsighted that she could barely see to read a book with her glasses off as she claimed she had to hold the page about 66mm or about 2 ½” from her eyes and she had to close one eye in order to read any of the words. Her glasses didn’t look that strong, but I couldn’t argue with her as I just didn’t know. The following year I was in grade 10 in Senior High. I came home after school one night to find that Corey had a friend with her at the house. This friend was called April and she was taller than Corey, was so much thinner she was almost spindly, and she was very flat chested. But she wore glasses that appeared to be a lot stronger than Corey’s. A lot of thought had gone into the making of April’s glasses. They were done in a much smaller red plastic frame than most girls wore these days, and the front of each lens was dished in. I suspected that they had used some tricks to thin them out as they looked very good on April’s face. But it was the hair that shocked me the most. April’s hair was red. But it was not the bright red I hated, it was a coppery bronze color and it looked great. And April did not have the freckles that most of the girls with bright red hair had. April’s hair looked so nice I decided that I no longer disliked red heads as long as their hair was this copper color. Even if I no longer felt that I disliked red heads there was not a chance I was going to ask April out. I was soon going to turn 16 and there was just no way would I ever ask a girl of 14 or younger to go out with me. But I was kind of attracted to April and I am afraid I mentioned this to Corey. She kidded me about changing my mind over not liking red heads and I mentioned that it wasn’t just that I liked her hair color now, but I also liked her glasses. Corey told me that April’s eyes were a lot worse than hers were, which I had already guessed. But what really surprised me was when Corey told me that April was going to lend her a pair of her old glasses. I knew enough about myopia at that point that I was pretty sure that wearing a stronger pair of glasses than a young girl required would likely make that person’s eyesight worse and I mentioned that this was a possibility to Corey. She really surprised me when she told me that she knew that, and she wanted to need, and to get stronger glasses. That’s when she swore me to secrecy and then she both shocked and intrigued me when she told me that she had been wearing an old pair of our Great Aunt Cordelia’s glasses ever since she was a little less than 3 years old. I remembered that there was a period where our grandmother, who had normally looked after myself and Corey so that mom could go to work had been very sick. During that period of time mom had taken the night shift at the hospital, as she was a nurse and she sometimes worked shifts, but while Nana was sick mom had taken steady nights so she could be off during the days to take Nana to get her treatments, and to the many doctor’s appointments she had to go to. Auntie had felt that she was not able to look after 2 children, but she did suggest that she would look after one of us, so Corey got to go and stay with Auntie pretty much full time for a period of around 6 months. I was around 5 then and I could be placed in a nursery school, which was more like a daycare. Dad took me to and picked me up from the school and since I was older, I could look after myself. I asked Corey if she actually remembered that she had worn Auntie’s glasses and Corey told me that Auntie had reminded her about it not long ago. Apparently when Corey was at Auntie’s house, she kept trying to grab Auntie’s glasses from her face. Auntie got tired of this game, and she got out a few pairs of her 2 daughter’s old glasses that they had worn when the girls were kids. I remembered Mom’s cousins, and they did wear very thick glasses at one time, but now they mostly always wore contact lenses. Anyway, Auntie gave Corey these old glasses to play with so that she would stop trying to grab her glasses. Corey had tried on all the 4 pairs and then she had taken the strongest pair of glasses and had put them on her face. She then refused to take them off and Auntie figured there was no sense trying to fight a 3-year-old. She assumed that Corey would get tired of having them on her face and she felt that there was no way that Corey could see while wearing them. A whole week went by, and Corey was still wearing the glasses. She would run away whenever Auntie tried to remove them, and finally Auntie decided there was likely a reason why Corey wanted to wear these glasses. It was very possible that Corey was actually quite nearsighted. After about a month of Corey wearing these strong glasses, Auntie made an appointment to have Corey’s eyes tested. I don’t know how Auntie had managed to avoid having mom and dad seeing Corey during this time, but I guess Nana had been so sick at the time that Corey had been more or less forgotten and while mom called Auntie to see how Corey was Auntie had just told her that everything was great. At the eye doctors he had to fight to get Corey to remove the glasses, but finally he managed. When he finished, he told Auntie that Corey really could use a little stronger prescription, so Auntie bought Corey her own glasses. I remember the rather thick looking pink plastic glasses with the curly part that went around her ears that Corey wore at first, but I had had never known that she had likely first worn glasses while she was staying with Auntie. This explained the special bond that Corey had with Auntie, as even now at age 14 Corey spent a lot of time with Auntie. As Corey had grown older Auntie had let Corey borrow and wear some of her daughter’s old glasses as well as some of her own old glasses Corey had worn these other glasses whenever she possibly could. She was very happy whenever it was discovered she needed new glasses even before she went to school, and she never took her glasses off – unless she was wearing an old pair of great Aunt Cordelia’s glasses. Apparently once everyone had gotten used to seeing Corey wearing glasses, she had discovered that no one even looked close enough at her to see which glasses she was wearing. And she must have been right about that because I had not noticed, and I always looked at girls wearing glasses – even my own sister. And now Corey was going to borrow a pair of April’s old glasses because they were stronger than her own as well as likely being stronger than any of the old pairs that Auntie had around. Knowing that Corey was going to be wearing a pair of April’s glasses made me watch Corey closer than normal. I could tell the morning she came down the stairs soon after her 15th birthday and while the brown plastic tortoiseshell frame looked similar to her own glasses, I could see that the lenses appeared to be slightly thicker. Mom didn’t notice anything, and Corey went off to school wearing what I was sure were April’s old glasses. That night after school April and Corey were in Corey’s room when I got home. I asked Corey how her day had gone, and she told me that at first, she had a bit of trouble seeing things clearly with April’s old glasses but by now things were crystal clear and she loved the feeling they gave her. I had taken to calling April Red, both because of her red hair as well as the red frames of her glasses. I didn’t do it in a nasty way, and she usually gave me a smile when I called her that. “What about it Red? Now that you are 15 would your parents let me take you to a show this weekend?” I asked. “Maybe if we went to the early show and you had me home by 10.” Red answered. “Then it is a date. I will pick you up by 6:30, we can walk to the show, and it should be over by 9:15 so I can get you home by 10 for sure.” I replied. I really don’t know why I had asked her out as I had not planned to do this until she was at least 16. But she had filled out quite nicely over the past year and she was developing quite a decent bust. She was a bit shorter than my now 6’2” but I was almost sure that we would fit together perfectly. And I guess I had realized that I had better stake my claim before anyone else did because I sure loved looking at her red framed biconcave glasses, even though the lenses were much smaller and thinner looking than her prescription would have looked like in a larger more modern looking frame. April and I walked to the show and when we got there, I gave her the chance to see whichever movie she wanted. I bought the tickets, and we went in to choose a seat. “You would probably prefer sitting in the lower section closer to the screen, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “I would, if you don’t mind. I can see things much better without squinting if I sit closer.” April replied. That gave me an opening to ask a few more questions, but I waited until the show ended and we walked home. “Is your eyesight nor really good with those glasses?” I asked. “I have a new pair on order. My eyes got -0.75D worse over the past 6 months.” April replied. “Corey told me that you were getting new glasses. She was waiting for you to order them so she could have your spare pair. I guess the ones you are wearing now will then be your spare glasses.” I spoke. “That’s about all they will be good for. And then my new glasses will work really well for about 3 months and then I will have to go another 3 months trying to squint to see things clearly before I can get new glasses again. I don’t know if your sister is smarter in seemingly making her eyes worse by wearing stronger glasses that she can force her eyes to see through, or if she is ruining what eyesight she has left. My eyes are a bit worse than hers are, but neither of us can see anything without glasses and at least she can see really well for more than 6 months.” April told me. “I know I probably shouldn’t ask, but if you don’t mind telling me, how strong are your glasses? And what was the prescription in the glasses you gave Corey?” I queried. “Why shouldn’t you ask? I don’t make a secret out of it. When I get my new glasses, they will have a -23.50D prescription in them. And my old spare glasses that I just gave to Corey were -21.00D.” April said. “I just thought that might be too personal a question, but I guess you don’t care.” I replied. “I care, but there is nothing I can do about it. My doctor says my myopia is genetic and my prescription will stop getting worse when my genes tell it to.” April responded. I had a really good time with Red. I knew I was going to take her out again, but I would wait until after she got her new glasses before we went to see another movie. There was a school dance coming up, so I made a date with her for the dance. I managed to get her home just before her 10pm curfew, and we stayed out on the front porch chatting for a while before I went home. Red let me kiss her goodnight at her front door and I went on home feeling very good about my date. I was a little surprised that Corey had easily been able to wear the -21D glasses as I knew that the last glasses she had been prescribed had been just -19D. Red had inherited her rather severe myopia from her mom, who also wore rather strong looking glasses, but now Red had even stronger glasses than her mom wore. If Aunt Cordelia and my sister Corey had not also worn strong minus glasses I am sure that my mom would not have been happy with me dating Red. Because of this she couldn’t say anything about April having to wear her strong glasses in order to see anything past the end of her nose. When April got her new glasses, I really liked them on her face. Her parents had paid for the hi index plastic lenses and the fronts were flat instead of curved inward like her old ones. She told me that the temple had 5018 written on it, so I knew the lens opening size was 50 mm wide and the bridge was 18 mm. April wouldn’t take off her glasses for any reason except to clean them, so I had to guess that the lens height was between 30 and 35mm. The lenses stuck out behind the frame by around 7 mm. and the overall lens thickness was around 11 or 12mm, which was pretty thin for her -23.50D prescription. The face of the frame was black, and was in a wayfarer style, while the temples were a bright red and were wider than normal. She looked really pretty with her new glasses on, but then again, her eyesight was so poor she couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without wearing her glasses. These glasses worked well for April for another 2 years. Even then she felt that her eyesight was still pretty good with them, but I had noticed her squinting at things, so I was happy when her mom made an eye appointment for her. She had not required a big change, but her new -24.25D glasses were a pleasant change in her appearance. And she really could see everything better. Two years later when she went for another vision exam her prescription had not changed. But I made her get a new pair of glasses anyway. As soon as she got her new glasses, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. Corey had managed to work her way up to a slightly stronger prescription than Red now had. I talked her into getting a pair of glasses that were as close to identical as Red’s were, because she was going to be Red’s maid of honor. That day in the church as Red walked down the aisle with her dad, I glanced at her, and then at my sister, both wearing identical glasses with 1.74 hi index full field lenses that were made using the full thickness of the lens blanks so there was barely only a small strip of the unground blank showing at the outer edge, and I was quite pleased that I had decided that I liked red hair after all. Specs4ever March 2020