Chapter 1 The Wannabe
My name is Blaze and I live in a hippyish town about an hour away from Vancouver, BC. I’m not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but people in my town can be pretty strange. People don’t really vaccinate around here and often go on weird diets. Since there’s so many hippyish people, the health standards are pretty lax. They don’t do vision screenings or require vaccinations at school.
I remember my friend Zen in grade one. He was having trouble seeing the board, so we always sat in the front row together. I remember Zen was pretty good at reading. Eventually he was discouraged from reading any books and had to wear reading glasses. Zen avoided wearing glasses and read when he felt like it. He knew he needed glasses, but he got forced to wear the wrong prescription. The teacher eventually got tired of his stubbornness, so she gave up on making him wear his glasses. The year after that I never saw him at school again. In hindsight I realized he was doing the Bates Method. His parents probably believed that optometrists ruin people’s eyes on purpose and are out to steal your money. I noticed a few other people doing the Bates Method as well. They would do strange stuff like avoid books, cover up their eyes and look directly into the sunlight.
Thankfully my family isn’t too crazy. They eat pretty clean, but they’re usually don’t not on any specific diet. They also get psychic readings and dabble in alternative medicine. My mom’s the one who’s into the metaphysical stuff and my dad mostly just plays guitar. He’s like John Lennon without the glasses. I have an older sister named Crystal and a younger sister named Lily. No one in my family really gets their vision checked, but we aren’t into the Bates Method either. They don’t care about eyes to do any of those things. Despite being from my family I’ve always been fascinated with glasses. I have no idea why. It could be because of my dad being a fan of John Lennon. It could be because of what happened to my friend in grade one. When I was a kid I asked my parents a few times if I could visit the eye doctor. They didn’t think I had anything wrong with my vision, so they always said no. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my eyes either, I just thought it was the most fascinating place ever.
When I was twelve I some of my friends were starting to get interested in girls. They occasionally acted weird around certain girls and often ended up talking about them too much. I remember a sleepover I had at my friend Ezra’s house. His friend invited some friend I forgot about and I invited my friend Micha. We all had a blast playing frisbee with his dog for a few hours. After that we went to his room. His parents were already in bed. “I want to show you something,” he whispered with a smirk on his face. He opened up his laptop and went onto a porn site. He showed me a video of a woman kissing some random guy. She had ridiculously large boobs, blonde hair and a fake looking face. Ezra and the other guys looked very hypnotized. The guy in the video put his hand down her pants and she started moaning like she was giving birth. We heard footsteps and Ezra slammed the laptop shut. I didn’t get what the big deal about girls was. Until Rachel arrived.
She had a nice toned body, dark brown curly hair, hazel eyes, a prominent nose and she wore tortoise shell glasses. They slightly minified background objects when I looked through the lenses, but they didn’t distort her eyes. I could tell they weren’t very strong, but she still wore them all the time. I often felt shy around her. I wanted to prove to her I wasn’t just another crazy hippie. I pretended not to believe in the supernatural and often carried books around to seem smart. I never really got into reading, but the books were very useful for convering up stiffies. She wasn’t fooled by my book game. It was pretty obvious to her I didn’t read much. She still talked to me anyways. We often talked about science and she told me about Vancouver. I learned a lot from her. For a while I suspected that I needed glasses. I was struggling to see the board since I started sitting closer to the back and I had problems seeing the computer screen. I often squinted and had to make the text large. “Can I try your glasses on?” I asked Rachel. She handed me her glasses. When I put them on they gave me a headache and made things very blurry for me. “Wow, I can’t see a thing out of these!” I exclaimed. “I guess that’s because you have perfect vision,” Rachel declared as she put her glasses back on. Since I really respected her opinion I decided that I didn’t need glasses after all. My vision problems were all in my head. I was really disappointed. I wanted to wear glasses like Rachel did. I thought this would finally be my chance.
TO BE CONTINUED….
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