My name is Lydia. I have always needed medium strong plus glasses to correct some hyperopia I developed when I was a child. My prescription never got any higher than +1.5 in my right and +3 in my left eye. Sometimes I was a bit sad about not needing a higher correction, but then again it felt good to be able to see at least a bit without glasses. I have to admit that I own a lot of different glasses, among them are some very strong plus glasses. I ordered them online. And yes, sometimes I enjoy wearing them for reading, pretending that my eyes are so bad that I have to literally stick my nose between the pages to recognize something. Sometimes it even is enough for me to just see those strong glasses, draped neatly on an open book, to make me feel very special. These small round glasses, with lenses about 1 cm thick, with 10 or 11 or even 12 diopters – I have them all - are my secret dream. To promote a cliché, I work as a teacher – mathematics, physics and chemistry. I am not married and don’t have children, and I’m not planning to change this. Of course I have hobbies like going to the cinema or do some sports, but some years ago I started to do private coaching after school. I know how to teach things, it is fun, and the extra money is nice. And there are a lot of children who need some extra lessons, especially in math. So there are many children who visit me in the afternoons. As I don’t live in the city, most of them are brought by their parents and collected again one hour later. Only one girl, Zoe, always came by bike, although she lives as far away as the others.
Zoe was a very special girl and my favorite student. Compared to all other children who come to me, she was far ahead of all of them. At the age of 15, she did not only manage her life herself – but you could totally rely on her. She looked after her younger sister, and she looked after her older brother to make sure that he was not only playing video games. She did most of the shopping for the family and cleaned the house. Yes, she had parents. Her father had moved far away to live with another woman, and her mother was working all day – started early and came home late. But she seemed happy to be always on the move, caring for her siblings - and for her education: It was not her mother who had sent her to me for getting some extra lessons. It was her own wish. She had heard about me from a friend who came for math lessons too.
Already in the first lesson I knew that Zoe was not here because she was dumb, lazy or slow. It was just that she did not have enough time to learn, to repeat things, to do her complete homework. At the table in my kitchen she found a place to work and study in peace and quiet. We went through a lot of material, sometimes I helped her to write a lengthy homework. Her marks got better, and soon she started asking questions that were not related to school. We talked about boys, teachers, politics, religion and all sorts of topics. I began to plan some more time when Zoe came, so we had time to talk about whatever was on her mind. She was very grown up in everything she did.
On one winter afternoon it was already dark when she sat at my kitchen table. She had brought some math exercises which had been copied by her teacher, some dark grey drawings and small numbers on light grey paper. I looked at a rather small triangle. “C is given, the angle is given, and you have to calculate b. How would you do that?” Zoe looked at me. She seemed to be tired. “First you should write down what you know”, I suggested and pointed at the triangle. “Look what’s written here. The angle is 55 degrees.” Zoe took a pink pen from my pencil case and wrote down: “Gamma = 55°”. “Okay, and now you write down… how long is c? It is given here.” Zoe tilted her head and squinted. “Oh my, I can’t see that”, she sighed. “I’m sorry, the light is a bit poor here”, I said and looked at her exercise sheet. I could read 7.6 cm for c without any effort. “It’s not the light”, she said. “My eyes are so bad. Mum says I should see a doctor.” “Oh”, I said, surprised about her being so open. “You should ask your mum to make an appointment and to go with you.” She is grown up, I thought, but there are things that parents really should do together with their children, no matter how independent they are. “No”, she exclaimed. “I don’t want to go there. I don’t want glasses!” “Well, if they make you see better?” I asked. “No”, she said firmly. “I’d rather be without.” I took off my glasses, looked at them and put them on again. “There’s nothing bad about wearing glasses”, I smiled. “Look, I wear mine all the time. They help me see better, they suit me, and I like them!” Zoe shook her head. “So what should I write down for c?” she asked. I was still smiling: “7.6 cm.”
The next day when I went shopping I bought some +1 over the counter readers. They had nice blue metal frames and did not look like cheap reading glasses. I wanted to offer Zoe to try them. I knew that she would not make an appointment, nor would she tell her mum anything. But she needed help. Some of her bad marks may have been the result of poor vision, I thought.
Three days later Zoe came around again. She was my last student for that day. I decided to show her that glasses are not bad or ugly or whatever she thought they were. I opened the drawer in which I collected my glasses. I took out a pair with oval translucent frames and stronger lenses – they were so strong that I could read her exercises, but they were far too strong to see across the room. I thought the strength was already quite noticeable with R +4.5 and L +6.0, and I wanted Zoe to notice that. I put them on and walked a bit through my house. Then I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I liked what I saw – nicely magnified eyes behind beautiful thick lenses, and the frames really looked cool! When I took them off, my left eye turned in. Great, that was the effect I wanted. I wanted to show Zoe how glasses can help.
When the doorbell rang, I opened the door and went back into the kitchen. “Come in”, I called. Zoe came in, closed the door and entered the kitchen. I pretended to be busy with some dishes. When she sat down, I put away a cup and turned around. “Hey, how are you”, I smiled. Zoe looked at me. “Wow”, she said, “did you get new glasses? They really suit you!” “No”, I answered. “I got them already a while ago. They are a bit stronger than my regular glasses but they are great for working with you.” I sat down at the table, took off the glasses and looked at Zoe. I could feel my left eye turning in. Then I put them on again. “They help me especially with small print or when I read for a longer time.” “Yes, I saw that they help you”, Zoe agreed. “Can you take them off again?” I nodded and pulled them down my nose. “Wow”, said Zoe. “Without them you are totally cross-eyed!” “I know.” I pushed them up again. “So you can see that they really help me.” Slowly Zoe pulled out her exercise sheets. She seemed to be impressed somehow. “So let’s go on with the triangles, now that I can see them so well”, I said. It was the same exercise sheet that she could not read in the last lesson. “Here’s another one with two given angles. You should calculate b this time. Are you ready?” Zoe took a purple pen from my pencil case and wrote down: “Sheet Nr.5.” I watched her. “It is really good that you organize everything so carefully”, I complimented her. “Now you should try to organize each exercise in the same way. So first write down what you know, like you did in the last lesson.” Zoe stared at her sheet. I pointed at the exercise: “Here, it’s nr.7 today.” Zoe wrote down the number. She stared at her exercise sheet again, then she wrote her name in the upper right corner. I smiled. “Now that you know how to write your name, you should try to write some numbers, what do you think?” She sighed. “Yeeeessss.” She looked again at her exercises. It was clear to me that she simply could not see what was written there.
I pulled the blue reading glasses out of the box in which I kept more pens, rulers and a calculator for my students and laid them on the table without saying anything. Zoe looked at me with a slightly open mouth. Finally I said. “Do you want to try if it helps?” “No”. She took the glasses and looked at them. Then she carefully opened the temples and put them on. She looked at the exercises. “Damn”, she murmured. “What is damn?” I asked. “I can read this”, she said contritely and pointed at the triangle. “Great!” I smiled. “No”, she said again and started to write down the values of the angles. “That means I need glasses. But I don’t want glasses.” “Some things can’t be chosen”, I said. She stuck out her tongue and started writing again. When she was finished, she took off the glasses. “Good”, I said, “Now try to find the right formula to calculate the missing parts.” Zoe squinted and moved her head a bit back. Then she sighed, took the glasses, put them on again and wrote down a formula. I smiled. Zoe did not say anything but wore the glasses for the whole lesson. “You can keep them if you want”, I offered her when she took them off and put away her exercise sheets. She shook her head. “Okay”, I said. “Then let’s leave them here, and if you want to wear them here, you can have them.” Zoe hesitated a moment, then she nodded. “Seems like a good idea”, she agreed. Some days later Zoe came around again, this time with a brand new exercise book. “A lot of work to do”, she announced. “We have to do all exercises from page 10 to page 15, and next week we will write an exam. Our teacher said that he will choose some of those exercises, exactly those, so we better do all of them!” “Good”, I said. “Did you already have a look at them? One page can mean 10 or 50 exercises, depending on how large they are printed.” Zoe shook her head. “We just got the books at the end of the lesson.” I took the book and opened it at page 10. The print was very small. “Sit down”, I said. “We should try to do as much as possible. We can start with the easy ones, here, number one.” Zoe took a green pen from my pencil case and wrote down the number. Then she stopped and looked at me. “What is it?” I asked. “Let me guess – you want the glasses?” She nodded silently. I took them from the box and she put them on. She smiled when she started writing down the exercises.
“Maybe you should think about getting your own glasses”, I suggested carefully. “Or can you see enough to write the exam? It’s no use if you can’t see it. You have to see everything if you want to get good marks!” “Zoe did not answer. Instead she asked: “Do you have a mirror?” “Come with me”, I said, escorting her to the bathroom. She did not take off the glasses when she followed me. In the bathroom she looked in the mirror. For a while she only stared at her reflection. Then she smiled. “Not bad”, she said and turned around to go back into the kitchen again. I was happy that she obviously could see better with the glasses I had chosen for her, and that she did not hate them that much anymore. She even seemed to like how she looked with the glasses. “Maybe you should take them with you when you write the exam”, I suggested. “Only for the time I mean”, I added before she could start to breathe fire again. She looked at me, then she asked if I had a box for the glasses. I went to my collection drawer and pulled out one of the many boxes. She carefully put the glasses in the box, then she packed her things. “See you next week”, she smiled. “And thanks a lot!” The next week Zoe came around for the next math lesson. I expected her to come at 4 pm. When I heard her bike on my garden path I got up and opened the door. In front of me stood Zoe, wearing her blue glasses. She was smiling.
THE END