My parents both wore glasses for nearsightedness, so it was not a big surprise to them when I was taken in to the optometrist for an eye exam when I was 10 years old and it was discovered that I was also nearsighted. My first prescription was only -1.75D in each eye, but once I got my new glasses and began wearing them I found that my vision was so much better when I was wearing them that I soon left them on all the time. By the time I graduated from High School my prescription had climbed to the point where my glasses were now slightly over -10D and I had a little bit of astigmatism in both eyes. I had tried contact lenses a couple of times, but I just didn’t have the incentive to wear them. With contacts you need to be very careful to clean them properly, and you really should not wear them more than 15 or 16 hours a day. If you were in a dusty environment, or in my case in a woodworking shop on weekends and holidays as well as after school, contacts were not as good a choice as if you worked in an office environment. It also helped that my parents had no qualms about wearing glasses themselves. The woodworking shop I worked at was actually a custom cabinet manufacturing business that was owned by my dad. I had been hanging around the shop since I was a child, and I loved the smell of sawdust and the noise of the machines as they sized and shaped the wood. I suppose you could say it was in my blood, as I had full intentions to take over the shop after my dad retired. I preferred working out on the shop floor, but I realized that, as the owner, I was eventually going to have to work in the office. Rather than fight the wishes of my dad I would often work in the office doing working drawings of the plans for the custom cupboards, but as often as possible I would go out to help the other employee’s do the actual build. When I came to work for dad full time right after high school, I was treated with very little respect. I had gotten my job because I was the boss’s son, and it took me a while to earn the respect of the men I had been working with for years after school, weekends and holidays. Eventually, because of the precision work I had been doing, they began treating me with a bit more respect. It had been about a year since I had left high school when I got a call from my old woodworking shop teacher. He was looking to place a female student in a summer position. She had one more year of high school, and my former teacher told me she was a very good worker. We were fairly busy at the time, so I asked dad if we could hire a female summer student and that is how Sarah Johnson came to work in the shop. Sarah was reasonably attractive and after she had been working in the shop for a couple of weeks I seriously considered asking her out for a date. Before I did that I asked Billy, the shop foreman, if he thought I should do that, or if it would complicate matters for him. He thought about it for a day or so, and his response was that if my relationship with Sarah complicated matters for him he would just talk to my father and have her terminated. I knew Billy was a pretty fair and decent guy, so I felt he wouldn’t tolerate any thing inappropriate, but he would be fair with Sarah. He had already told me she was a good worker and was a fast learner. I did ask Sarah for a date, and we had a great time. We ended up spending most Sunday’s together over the summer and Sarah would often be at my place for dinner on a Sunday night. I liked her a lot. She told me she wore contact lenses and I questioned her about how she could wear them at the shop with all the dust. She just told me that the safety glasses she wore kept the dust from getting into her eyes, but I wasn’t convinced enough to try to wear mine to work. I was very interested in seeing Sarah wearing glasses, but that whole summer went by without this happening. We dated for all of the following year, and we were still together the spring of her graduation. Sarah really didn’t have any wish to continue on in school and without my knowledge she asked my father if he would consider hiring her full time after she graduated. She had been a good worker as I know my dad asked Billy what his thoughts were. Billy must have approved, because on our next date Sarah told me she would be working full time starting as soon as her school year was finished. I liked Sarah a lot, and I was happy that I would be able to see her every day. My relationship with Sarah was very good, and it was gradually coming to a point where I began to think I would like to ask her to marry me. The only sticking point to me was that I wanted to see her wearing glasses, but I didn’t have the courage to ask her to wear her glasses for me. I just couldn’t bring myself to admit to her that I thought girls that wore glasses were hot. Finally the day came that I had warned Sarah about. All the shop equipment had dust collectors on them, with a constant vacuum in the flexible tubing that hooked to fixed ductwork that led to the collector bin. The flexible duct was mostly just slipped on to the fixed point on the machine so that it could be removed when a blade had to be changed, or sharpened or just worked on in general. Sarah was doing what we called tailing for the person feeding material into the saw and somehow the flexible tubing blew off, giving Sarah a pretty good dusting of fairly fine sawdust. Her safety glasses protected her eyes from a direct blast of the sawdust, and while that had worked perfectly for the past couple of years to keep Sarah from getting her eyes filled with dust, this time she was in trouble. She had to get to the washroom in a hurry and rinse her eyes out with a saline solution after she took out her contacts. My mom was the company bookkeeper, and while she didn’t work at the shop every day she was there that day, and she went into the ladies room to help Sarah. Mom rinsed Sarah’s eyes out a few times and they figured all the dust was cleaned out, but when Sarah tried to put her contacts back in she felt that her eyes were either too sore or else she needed to use fresh contacts. She did have her glasses with her, and when she came out of the washroom I was thrilled to see her wearing them. Sarah’s glasses looked strong. There was quite a bit of edge thickness, and the fronts were dead flat. If they were high index lenses I would have guess that they were pretty close to -20D. But if they were regular old CR39 plastic they would likely be closer to -13D or maybe a little more. You might ask how I knew that, but my -10D glasses were done with the 1.74 index plastic and my old pair of safety glasses were done in regular plastic with a 3mm center thickness. My new glasses barely showed any thickness sticking behind the lenses, but my safety glasses looked to be well over a half inch thick. However, I didn’t care what the power of the lenses in Sarah’s glasses was. I was more interested in seeing how she looked wearing them, and now I knew. She looked fine, mighty fine I asked Sarah if she was all right, or if she wanted me to give her a ride home so she could take the rest of the day off. I could tell that she was embarrassed in having to wear her glasses in front of me and I managed to mention that she was quite attractive when she was wearing her glasses. She looked at me as if I were crazy to have said that, but then she said she might as well keep working and maybe after a day of not wearing contacts she might be able to get all the dust out of her eyes and then she could wear them again the next day. The following day Sarah was back wearing contacts. I knew I should not say anything to her about the possibility of another accidental sawdust blast, and I didn’t. But I guess my mom and dad had talked in the office about Sarah and the possibility of her getting a face full of sawdust again. If there was any damage to her eyes because of the dust getting under her lenses they felt the company would be considered liable and there would be a compensation claim. I know that both mom and dad really liked Sarah, and while I didn’t know anything about it they called her into the office and had a conversation with her. The end result was that Sarah had a choice. She could get herself a pair of prescription safety glasses to wear while she was at work. If she decided that she wasn’t willing to forego the wearing of contacts she would be laid off and she could collect unemployment until she found another job. Sarah and I had a date Friday night, and she was upset. She disliked wearing glasses and she really hated the fact that she was either going to be forced to wear glasses at work, or basically be fired. Mom and dad had not discussed this with me and I had a hard time making Sarah believe that I didn’t know anything about this. Finally she believed me and we spent much of the rest of our date night talking over what she should do. I told her she looked just as good wearing her glasses as she did without them and I think she believed that I really meant that. I told her that she already had to wear safety glasses, so a pair with a prescription wouldn’t really be a big deal. And I explained that if she were to get her eyes full of sawdust again her eyes could possibly be severely damaged and then the company would be held liable. She had not realized that this would be the case, and when I explained that the resulting costs of a lawsuit and the damages would likely put the company out of business her attitude changed a lot. By the time came for me to take Sarah home she had decided that we would go to the optician’s the next day and she would order her safety glasses. Her prescription for her glasses was right up to date so she would not require an eye exam. We chose a pair of safety glasses that looked really good on Sarah. I was a bit surprised to find out that her eyes were not that much worse than mine were. Her prescription was right around -15D with a small amount of astigmatism and the lenses in her existing glasses were done in 1.67 plastic. When they came in and she started wearing them to work I found I really liked her appearance wearing them. I started working on Sarah to wear her regular glasses out on a date instead of just to work and back, and about a month went by before she gave in to my urging. I still see Sarah wearing her contacts once in a while, but she has certainly gone from a full time contact lens wearer to a very much part time wearer. And, I have asked Sarah to marry me. I fully expect that she will choose to be married wearing contact lenses but that is perfectly fine with me. All it took was a little dust in the eyes. Specs4ever May 2018