Continuing my true stories of glasses, girls, life, and the ups and downs of combining all three, I want to concentrate now on my tentative ventures into adult life. Of course, I will stick to the stories where glasses are involved.
I was always attracted to girls in glasses first and foremost, but as life would have it, myopic or hyperopic girls didn’t seem to be too prolific, or indeed didn’t socialise or appear in pubs, clubs, or dance halls as much as I would have liked. Having just had my first ever serious encounter with a girl, who happened to be seriously myopic (see Glasses Moments 3 - X), my appetite was well and truly whetted, and I made it my life’s mission to find a girl with poor eyesight as my life partner. I wasn’t prepared for it happening quite so soon though.
At age seventeen, by pure chance, I was attending a family function and I noticed one of the waitresses serving the tables. She was quite beautiful, but no glasses. Another of my quirks was that I always compared girls to my pop idols of the time, and this influenced me a lot too, but how many pop idols of the sixties and seventies wore glasses? None! Unless you counted Nana Mouskouri, and I did have a thing for her too! But this girl had a strong resemblance to Brenda Lee, who I was very much into at the time (Google her!). I watched her going to and fro, serving and clearing tables, and then something magical happened. I saw her standing by the kitchen door and another girl handed her what looked like a letter, and they were both giggling. She took the letter, looked at it, screwed her face up and held her hand out at arm’s length with the letter. She shook her head and handed the letter back to her colleague, who immediately pressed it back into her hand and made gestures for her to read it now. She looked exasperated, then went into an inside jacket pocket and took out a glasses case. She opened the case and took out a pair of glasses, then put them on and read the letter. There was much mirth and laughter as she read it, and I was mesmerised watching her, all the time thinking that this girl was about my own age, but couldn’t read at all without glasses, something I thought only applied to old people! The rest of the evening I paid more attention to this lovely girl than the people I was with. When the function was ending, everyone was getting ready to go and the girls were clearing the tables. I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ I went over to the kitchen door and waited until she came out. She stopped, smiled at me, and made to go past me. I gently touched her wrist, and she stopped, looking at me quizzically. I said, “Look, it’s late. You’re busy. I’m just leaving. But I’ll get straight to the point. I really have to ask you something.” She tilted her head to one side and said “Yes?” “Would you go out with me?” I blurted out, ready to run off with a red face. She thought for a minute, then said “OK then.” I wasn’t quite prepared for that, so I said “Ummm….. when? Where?” She told me where she worked during the day - an office in the city centre, and asked if I could meet her there after work the next day and go for something to eat. After that, who knows? Film? Walk? The arrangements were made quickly and I left. I was on cloud 9!
Next day, the work dragged on and I thought the day would never end. I had a quick wash and brush up in the toilet at work and headed into town. I only had to wait ten minutes, and she came out of her office and gave me a big smile and a wave. We introduced ourselves properly. She was called Jan, short for Janice. We went to a pasta house which was part of a big hotel in town. After being shown to a table, the waiter handed us the menus. I started to read it and she just sat there watching me. “What are you having?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said, “what about you?” “Oh, I’ll just have what you have,” she said. She looked uncomfortable, and I knew why. She didn’t want me to know that she had terrible eyesight. How was I going to play this? I said, “I think I’ll have the Seafood Fettuccine, OK?” She said, “Oh, I don’t like seafood. I can eat fish, but I hate shellfish so I better not.” I was determined I wasn’t going to read the menu out to her, so I said, “Well, just take your time, read through the menu and choose something you like.” She took the menu, looked at it with a blank stare, then put it face down on the table. She looked at me almost in tears and said, “I’m so sorry. I can’t order. I can’t read the menu.” I waited a moment, then said to her, “You can’t read it, or you can’t see it?” Then she said, “Both. I can’t read anything without my glasses. And what’s worse is I’ve gone and left them on my desk at work. I was too excited at coming to meet you.” My heart just totally went out to her at that moment. “Come here, I’ll go through it with you,” I said, and we moved our seats close together and I could feel her hair touching my cheek as I read the menu to her while I was aware of the stares from the adjoining table. I did wonder myself how a sixteen year old girl had such poor near vision. I asked her over the meal, and she said she had worn glasses since as long as she could remember, but now she just tried to do without them except for reading and close work, as “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” she said, quoting the old well-worn saying. “Well,” I said, “that’s what attracted me to you, apart from your terrific looks.” “How did you know I wore glasses?” she said, turning bright red. “I saw you at the kitchen door at the function,” I replied. You looked fabulous in them. “Well, I don’t feel fabulous in them, having to put them on every time to read. I feel like an old grandma!” We laughed about it for the rest of the evening, and I had hoped I had put her mind at ease.
The next day was Saturday, and I had arranged to take her to an art gallery in the city centre where she wanted to see an exhibition by a particular artist she had studied at school. We entered the very grand building which was all marble pillars and staricases and bought two guide books. We started at the beginning as indicated by the lady at the desk, and when we entered the first exhibition hall, Jan opened her bag and took out a glasses case. Then she took her glasses out of the case, unwound a cord that was wrapped round them, and put the cord around her neck with the glasses opened up and resting on her quite ample breasts. This whole action, and seeing them resting there, just did wonderful things for me. Her glasses were on and off her face while she read the guide book, stood back to admire the paintings, then read the plaques on the walls. I never knew there could be so much art involved in the act of putting glasses on and off, never mind in the actual paintings themselves! I’ll never forget that visit.
When we had exhausted the exhibition, we went into the gallery cafe for a snack. She still had the glasses round her neck, and she immediately donned them to read the menu this time. The next act drove me absolutely frantic. She was reading the menu, and then asking me what I thought was in a certain item, but when she spoke to me, she looked at me over the top of the glasses with them perched on the end of her nose. Wow! Double wow! Why did girls torture me like this? She got a few stares from other customers too. I was quite jealous - I thought there must be other glasses fans in that cafe! I asked her how she’d managed to get her glasses since she had left them at work. She said these were an old pair she got when she was 14, and she hated them. She said, “I look like I’m out of an old black and white movie!” I said, “I think you look gorgeous in them.” She blushed. When I think back knowing what I do now, her prescription must have been about +3.50.
Jan and I were together for four years, and it got to the stage where families on both sides were starting to accept that we would get married. Some were actually saying to our faces, “Wait until you get your own little house together - it’ll be lovely. We’ll visit you every week!” This started alarm bells ringing in my head. Too much too soon! At 21, I had much more living to do before all that. The spark died out and we parted - painfully. I’ve edited the ending of this story as it is a bit too painful. Life is complicated!
https://vision-and-spex.com/glasses-moments-4-hyperopic-jan-t544.html