After my wife graduated from university, she was hired by a large advertising firm in the city. We were fortunate to be the winning bidder on a ten-year-old home that was near the rapid transit line that took her right into the downtown area, and it was a short walk for her to her office. We moved into the house, and I started renovating it, since my chosen profession was in home construction. It really isn’t a whole lot of fun living in the mess that renovations always cause, especially since I had my crews working on 2 other projects at this time. But we survived and eventually, once I had the house done over into Brittany’s tastes, she was much happier to come home from work and kick back with a glass of wine. I was still working on the garage, as it had been built as a totally separate building at the same time the house was. The house and garage had a really steep pitch on the roof, and when I looked at the garage I decided that, while I needed to maintain the 10/12 pitch of the roof, if I lengthened the garage to add some more room at the back for toy and tool storage I would be better off adding another bay to the side as well to make it a 3 car, or a 2 car with the new stall being a boat deep area. In essence I would be mostly demolishing the existing garage and building a complete new one but dealing with the municipality was easier for a renovation permit than it was for a demolish and new construction permit, so I went that route. When my guys were finished, we had a really nice matching 3 car garage that looked as if it had been built at the same time as the house. The dormers on the second story of the garage matched the dormers on the house, and now I had a complete in law suite upstairs. We really had no use for, nor did we have any plans for using the 2-bedroom suite, but it would certainly give us a wonderful selling feature should we decide to flip the place. All this work was finished around the time we celebrated our fourth anniversary. Britt was doing very well at the firm that employed her, and she had just gotten a raise when we discovered that she was pregnant. This had sort of been unplanned as we had figured we would give it 5 years of marriage before we brought any offspring into the world. However, we were not displeased with the news that there was going to be an addition to our family and the birth of Timothy James was one of the happiest days of my life. Britt could have taken a year off legally and still supposedly had her old job back. But she knew that if she didn’t return to work sooner, she would likely have been passed over for some of the promotions after her eventual return. We started advertising for a full-time nanny for Tim, and now the in-law suite was going to be the perfect place for a nanny to live. Since it was a 2-bedroom suite we could have even hired a couple, with at least one child. We had a number of applicants and finally we settled on a young lady who was about 5 years younger than Britt. Angela had worked in a day care center since she had left high school and she seemed to be a perfect fit. I thought she might be a contact lens wearer when we interviewed her because of the way she scrunched up her eyes and blinked every once in a while. Britt was a little nearsighted and wore glasses when watching TV and driving, but with a prescription of -2.50D she didn’t wear her glasses except when necessary. Her older sister Jamie had a much stronger prescription and wore contacts all the time and I had noticed her doing the same thing that Angela did once in a while. Unless the light is just perfect you can’t always see soft contact lenses on a person’s eye, but it did not bother me that Angela wore correction. Actually, I did prefer my own wife, because she wore her glasses often enough to give me the satisfaction of seeing her in them and I always told her that I had married 2 different girls: one with glasses and one without. When she asked me which I would rather have I always told her that I loved them both equally. Britt had watched Jamie, who was a couple of years older than she was, get contact lenses when her eyesight was somewhere around the range that Britt’s was now - and had been for years. Once Jamie started wearing her contacts her prescription began a slow, but gradual climb and now Jamie wore a prescription of around -10D, but I do not know if that was her contact lens prescription or her glasses prescription as I understand that with minus contacts, as the prescription gets higher, the contacts need to be proportionally weaker than the glasses since the contacts sit right on the eye and glasses are a few millimeters away from the cornea. Britt seemed to blame Jamie’s continual contact lens wear as the reason that Jamie’s eyes had gotten so much worse, and I did not correct her thoughts as I really liked seeing my wife wearing her glasses. Yes, it is possible that since Jamie was always looking through her distance prescription because of the contacts, and Britt was taking her glasses off to read most of the time, that this might have been the reason why Britt’s eyes remained stable and Jamie’s worsened, but there are many other environmental factors to take into account so one could just not be certain of the real cause for this. I didn’t think much about the fact that Angela wore vision correction. After all a large percentage of the population wears glasses. I did figure that Angela couldn’t wear contacts all of the time and I would eventually see Angela wearing her glasses. However, by the time Angela had been with us for over a year I still hadn’t seen her wearing glasses. She was doing a fantastic job raising Tim, and we were thrilled that we had hired her. Tim was now 12 months old and was walking and teething and in general just being a delight to have around. We had not been taking any precautions, and it was not a big surprise when we discovered that Britt was pregnant again. Her sister Jamie wanted to know the gender of the unborn baby, and we did find out from the doctor that the baby was going to be a girl, even though it didn’t matter to us. Because Angela was doing such a great job with Tim, Britt returned to work almost immediately after our daughter Courtney was born. Britt had worn her -2.50D glasses for years without needing a change in prescription, but for some reason after Courtney was born, she needed new glasses. Because of the increased power of the lenses in her new glasses Britt became a full time glasses wearer as she could no longer function without her -4.00D glasses and I must admit that I rather liked the fact that her glasses were on her face full time. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to want to have that laser surgery either. Angela was a real asset to have around to look after the kids. In one way I would rather have had Brittany quit work and stay home with them, but her job did pay very well, and she enjoyed working. Angela seemed to be doing a fantastic job as she was now managing to get Tim into the terrible two’s even while she had to cater to the demands of a new baby. We even gave Angela a sizeable raise because we did not want her to ever think of going out to look for another job. Tim was around 2 when Angela went to Britt and told her that Tim seemed to be having a hard time seeing things that were any distance away from him. Britt and I took a closer look at Tim after that, and we decided that Angela was correct in her thoughts that Tim seemed to be a bit nearsighted already and although 2 was a young age to have to start wearing glasses it was not the end of the world as vision care had improved considerably over the years. I basically asked Angela if she could take charge in having Tim’s vision problems looked into and she told me that she would do so immediately. We were paying for Angela’s health insurance as part of her employment contract, and I mentioned to her that since her vision care was also covered, she might like to get herself a new pair of glasses or contacts at the same time. I wondered why she went a little red in the face when I mentioned that, but she just sort of said that it might be a good idea. Tim looked really cute wearing his new glasses, even though the lenses seemed to be quite thick to me. I was pretty sure that Angela had gotten a new pair for herself because I had seen the bill from the insurance carrier, and I thought she had spent an awful lot of money on her own glasses, especially if she didn’t plan on wearing them. I asked her if we were going to see her wearing her expensive new glasses – sort of sarcastically I think, and she answered that her glasses would not be here for another week or two. I asked why so long, and she simply answered that her glasses were a very strong prescription, and they took longer to make. That is when she told me that she would be wearing them all the time now because her eye doctor wanted her to stop wearing contact lenses due to the damage they had done to her eyes. I was a little shocked when I saw Angela wearing her glasses for the first time. She had not been kidding when she said that her glasses were very strong. The part that contained the prescription was a small circle that looked to be no more than 25mm (1”) in diameter right over her eyes and even with that the lenses looked to be around 11mm (1/2”) thick at the edges. But Angela was an extremely attractive young girl and once I got used to seeing her wearing her glasses, I didn’t think any more about it. Tim had been 21 months old when Courtney was born, so there is a little under 2 years difference between the two of them. When Tim was 2, he had gotten his first pair of glasses, and now that he was almost 30 months his sister was 15 months. Angela came to me one evening after I got home from work and told me that Tim seemed to be having trouble seeing things clearly again and she suggested that both children should have eye exams as it was suggested that a first eye exam should be done by the age of 1. I told her to go ahead and make appointments for both the kids, and I was going to discuss this with Brittany when she got home that evening. Things seemed to be very busy at Britt’s office, because she had been putting in a lot of extra hours at work for the past 6 months, but she was bringing in a bigger salary, so I just had to put up with it. Britt still wasn’t home by 11pm. I had put the kids to bed at 8 and had read them their stories. It was really unusual for Britt to be this late and I was a little worried. At midnight the ringing of the phone woke me up. Britt had been in an automobile accident and had been taken to Saint Andrew’s hospital. I spoke with the admitting room nurse and asked her if I should come to the hospital, but she advised me that Britt had a possible concussion, a broken arm, which had been set, and she had been sedated and was resting comfortably. The doctor wanted to make sure that none of the bruises she had suffered turned into blood clots, so they also had her on a blood thinner. I was to call back in the morning after 10 am and the doctor would likely have okayed her release. I slept fitfully for the next 5 hours and when I woke up, I made myself a pot of coffee and went to look for our car insurance policies. I wanted some details on the accident, and I wanted to be able to inform the insurance adjuster of where the car had been towed, but I didn’t know where the accident had happened. I could only surmise that it had been in one of the two precincts that she had driven through on her way home. So, I called both precincts. No new Lexus with a Brittany Summers driving had been involved in an accident last evening. I had the morning news on softly while I had been doing this and all of a sudden, I heard the name Brittany Summers, which caused me to perk up and listen carefully. Brit had been riding in a car driven by a Darrin Alexander when a kid on a skateboard had hit a stone in the road and had been thrown in front of the Alexander car. The driver had successfully swerved to miss the kid, but in doing so had collided with a power pole, doing extensive damage to the car, and injuring the passenger. That answered one question, but it raised a few more. Why was Britt riding with Darrin Alexander? What were they doing in that part of town? I had met Darrin at a few of my wife’s office parties. He was her immediate boss, but she always claimed she didn’t really like the guy. Maybe she didn’t, but I didn’t really like what my mind was thinking right now. By 6 am I had my guy’s workday all set up, so I gave my foreman a call and we discussed what I wanted done. Once that was established, I tried the hospital again, but Britt was still sleeping. This time it was suggested that I could come down around 8 and I would be able to see her. The nurse I talked to suggested that I should bring Britt’s spare pair of glasses because her glasses had been smashed beyond repair in the crash. By the time I had finished my breakfast and my phone calls it was 7 am and Angela and the kids were now up, and Angela was in the process of feeding them. I asked Angela if she could also make an eye appointment for Brittany as well when she called for the kids that morning so she told me she would call as soon as the doctor’s office was open. I didn’t want to jump the gun and accuse Britt of infidelity. But the area where the accident happened was close to what everyone called motel row and I was having a hard time thinking of any other reason why Britt and her boss would be out that way. It also made me wonder if they had been together in a motel room on some of those other nights that Britt was supposedly working late, I hated being so suspicious, but in many cases after 7 years of marriage the bloom wears off the rose. I collected some of Britt’s clothing to take for her as I knew her other clothes had likely been cut off by the EMT’s. When I arrived at Britts hospital room the doctor was just walking out. He told me that none of the bruising looked bad enough to cause any blood clots and that her arm had been placed in an above elbow plaster cast. He did say that other than her seeing double pretty much everything seemed all right. A concussion had been ruled out, and they were not sure why Britt was having double vision problems, but he suggested a visit to an ophthalmologist fairly soon. He was happy when I told him that was being arranged because of her broken glasses anyway. As soon as I looked at Britt I knew. She averted her eyes and even though she was likely unable to see me clearly, she would not look me in the face. This was not the time, nor the place for a showdown though and I simply told Britt that she was being released. I helped her get dressed in the clothing I brought her, and I called to see if Angela had arranger the eye doctor visit yet. She had just gotten off the phone and Britt and both kids had appointments right after lunch. Conversation was very stilted on the way home. I helped Britt to our room, and she lay down for a while. I helped her wrap her hand in plastic so her cast would stay dry, and she showered. We had lunch and it was time to get her dressed to go see the eye doctor. Britt went in first because her prescription was thought to be low enough that she could get her new glasses while we waited. When he found out that Britt had just been in a car accident the doctor wasn’t sure if he should do a new prescription for her because his refraction showed that her myopia had really jumped from -4.00D up to -7.50D - a -3.50D increase. Also, she now requited 10 degrees of base out prism in each eye to nullify the double vision she was having. After a few minutes of discussion, it was decided that we would have new glasses made with her -7.50D myopia correction and the prism would be corrected with a Fresnel prism that was stuck to each lens to help with the double vision. There was no use ordering expensive thin lenses for her new glasses, because there was a possibility that her myopia would drop back down to where it had been before the big bump on her head from the accident occurred. Tim didn’t require much of a change, but the doctor did say that now that he knew his letters it was much easier to fine tune his prescription. But the big surprise to me was when 18 month old Courtney needed a stronger prescription than the one that Tim had just been given. And the doctor said he could have given her a little bit stronger prescription but this one would suffice until she could read a bit better so he could then fine tune it as he had done with Tim. Bitt’s glasses were ready by the time Tim and Courtney were finished their exams and had their glasses ordered so she had hers fitted and the doctor wanted to do a quick test to see how well she was able to see. He was satisfied with the prescription but cautioned us to call immediately if Britt had trouble with her double vision, or if her distance prescription seemed at all too strong. If you have ever been cheated on by your partner, you will have a pretty rough time for a while. You will have feelings of anger, of self-doubt, of inadequacy and you will have bouts of depression. I immediately moved out of the master bedroom to the guest room and when Britt wanted to “have a discussion” I simply told her I didn’t have anything to talk to her about. She made her choice, and she was going to have to live with it. She could decide what she wanted to do when her arm healed, and she was able to return to work. Over the next 4 weeks I drove her to see her doctor every week, and on the 4th week she also went back to see the eye doctor. The arm was healing nicely, and the cast would be coming off the following week. Her eye doctor told her that her distance vision could be improved by another -0.50D increase in each eye, and there had been no change in her need for the 10 degrees of base out prism in each eye. He suggested that she could now order new, higher index lenses with the prism ground into them instead of the stick on Fresnel lenses, so she chose a new frame and ordered her new glasses. Britt had been working from home over the past 2 weeks but until the cast came off her arm, she wasn’t going to be able to drive herself to the office. I had brought her Lexus home and it was sitting in the garage. I had also gone over all of our assets, and I had spoken to a lawyer. My contracting company was set up in such a way that Britt couldn’t really touch it. The assets were mostly leased, and while I made a good income there really wasn’t much left if the bills were all paid, and the company was liquidated. The house was still fairly heavily mortgaged, and while my pickup was paid off so was her car. We had some savings, but if I let her have the savings so she could put a down payment on a condo she likely would let me keep the house. Finally, we had a civilized discussion. She agreed with my thoughts on the asset division. She wondered about custody of the children, and I told her that we should have joint custody, but they could live with me, and she could have them on weekends, or if that was too much for her then every other weekend was fine. She had been too busy working to have had much to do with the kids anyway so I felt that even having them on every second weekend would be more than she wanted to handle. Britt agreed with everything I suggested – a real rarity according to my lawyer. We had just picked up her new glasses that day, and when I saw her wearing them for a fleeting moment I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I thought she looked wonderful wearing them and they were really thick at the sides. But I knew that if she had cheated once she would cheat again if the occasion arose, and I just couldn’t live my life wondering where she was every time she wasn’t home on time. After Britt moved out, I was able to turn my attention towards the children. I really hadn’t spent any time with Courtney and while I was a little sad to see her running around and having fun wearing her very strong looking glasses, I realized that both my kids were going to have to wear thick glasses for the rest of their life. I had been a little surprised that Brittany’s new glasses had aroused me the way they did, and every time I looked at Angela something inside of me wanted to take this dark haired beauty with the nice chest, the perfect butt and the really strong glasses to bed with me. I had never thought much about wanting a lady partner that wore thick glasses, but now I realized that there was something about the strong lenses that turned me on. The divorce went through quickly and the decree was issued within 6 months. Everything was cut and dried and the custody agreement was as neat as the court could have hoped for. And for the first few months Brittany was by to pick up the kids every second Saturday morning. I had told her that she could have them from Friday night until Sunday night, but she decided that one night every 2 weeks was all she could handle and to be completely honest this did not surprise me. Most of the interaction with the children had been through Angela, and I am pretty sure that Courtney considered Angela more like a mom than she did Brittany. Around the 9 month mark Brittany started begging off once in a while. It started first that she was busy that weekend and could she trade for the following one. Soon it was every 3 weeks that she took the kids, then after a year it went to once a month. This was fine with me because Tim and Courtney expressed their wishes that they would rather stay home fairly vocally. Courtney was now 3, and Tim was almost 5 so they knew what they wanted, and unfortunately even though Britt was their mother, neither child really saw her as that. Tim had to go for an eye exam before he went to school. His prescription was now right around -13D and Courtney’s glasses were a couple of diopters stronger. Brittany’s sister Jamie and her mom had been stopping by frequently to visit the children – visits that I encouraged because I did not want it ever to seem that I had prevented Britt’s family from seeing their grandchildren/niece or nephew. I had no problem with Jamie, or her mom and they both knew that Brittany had caused the divorce because she had been sleeping with another man. What was interesting though was that Jamie and Tim both had similar prescriptions in their glasses and that is how I found out that the -10D that I thought was Jamie’s prescription had been her contact lens prescription at the time. Still, even though Jamie was quite nearsighted we really couldn’t figure out why both Tim and Courtney were highly myopic at such a young age. I had been getting vibes from Angela that she would not be adverse if I were to make a move her way. I was a little afraid to start something though because I couldn’t afford to lose her if something went wrong. Did I want her? I sure did. I could think of nothing better than to strip her naked – other than her glasses mind you - and make love to her in my big king sized bed. The glasses could come off if she wanted them removed, but I wouldn’t be the one removing them unless requested. I started off slowly by asking her if she wanted to watch television with me after the kids were in bed. We started off doing that together for a while and then one night I surprised her by suggesting that we should get a babysitter and go out for a nice dinner. That went well, and the next Saturday night that Britt had the kids we went to a movie. Before I knew it, we were sleeping together and soon her clothing had replaced Brittany’s in the empty closets. I really loved making love to Angela, especially when it was daylight and I could look through the strong myodisc lenses of her glasses into her tiny eyes, minified by the power of the lenses. If I hadn’t wanted to have children with Angela, I would have taken precautions. At least that is what I told her when she told me she was pregnant. I was actually ambivalent about having another child, but both Tim and Courtney were going to be 6 and 4 by the time their brother or sister came along. I thought about marriage, but a wedding ring hadn’t stopped Brittany from finding another guy, so it didn’t seem like something worth worrying about. I was the monogamous type, and felt Angela was as well. We had a baby brother for Tim. Luke was a pretty good baby and he didn’t cost me a lot of sleep. But Angela was the one who looked after him most of the time because my construction business was going gangbusters. Luke was barely 9 months old when Angela was pregnant again. This time we had another girl. Luke was only about 18 months when I came home to find that Luke was wearing glasses. Apparently, Angela had taken all the kids with her, and Tim, Courtney and Luke had gotten eye exams. Now 3 out of 4 of my kids were wearing strong glasses, as Luke’s glasses seemed to be every bit as strong as the ones Tim had first worn. It was a real mystery to me as to why all my offspring had such poor eyesight, but I couldn’t argue with the fact that all three of them seemed to need, and were quite happy to wear, their high minus glasses. Myka was around 16 months of age when I came home early on a day that I had told Angela that I would be late. A building inspector had wanted a change made that was going to require my electrical contractor to return in the morning to make a small correction in the way he had done the wiring for the electric car charging station in the garage. I suspected that the way my electrician had done the work would have been completely safe and adequate, but this inspector was well known for throwing his weight around and it was really not worth me getting on his bad side. Since the wiring had not passed, we could not complete the insulation that day, and my drywallers had to be put off for a day. I was home early instead of late and as I walked into the house; I saw Myka playing on the rec room carpet. She had something funny on her head. It looked like a leather harness, and when she turned to the noise from my footsteps, I saw that the leather harness held a glasses frame tight to her face. There were lenses in the frame because I could see the reflections bouncing off them. I almost said WTF, but I had been conditioned not to swear around the children and I caught myself in time. I picked Myka up and unbuckled the well-worn leather harness. Myka didn’t want to let me remove the glasses and when I did my poor little child gave me the most myopic squint I had ever seen. Angela had heard Myka fussing, and she came into the rec room. When she saw me and saw I was holding the leather harness she averted her eyes from mine much as Britt had done when I knew that she had cheated on me. I had a pretty good idea where the harness had come from. This had likely been the contraption that Angela had worn when she was a baby. For some unexplained reason she had made every one of my 4 children wear these strong lenses, and as a result I now had 4 very myopic children. I didn’t know what to do. This was child abuse in no uncertain terms. If I called the police and had her charged, I would then be left raising 4 very nearsighted children on my own. And, yes, I was certain that if Myka were to have a vision test right now I was sure that she would be prescribed very strong glasses. I had to think this out very carefully. Angela and I didn’t talk at all that night. She did ask if I wanted her to sleep in the guest room, but I couldn’t see that as being a solution. I did tell her to book Myka in for an eye exam as soon as possible, and I told her that she better not use her old glasses on her again. That’s when she tried to tell me that the only reason she had used her old glasses on the kids was that they all seemed to be very shortsighted and she just wanted to help them out until they could have proper eye exams. She claimed that all of the kids had been very happy to wear her old glasses and that they all objected whenever she tried to remove them. I had seen evidence of that with Myka, but I think I had walked in after the damage was done. I didn’t know for sure, but I certainly suspected that putting strong minus lenses in front of the eyes of a young child would create a significant amount of myopia in the child. As a result, I decided to let things go. Myka had her eye exam, and she was even more nearsighted than her older sister Courtney was so her first glasses were much stronger. My relationship with Angela was not permanently damaged, but I had lost some of my trust in her. I now made sure that I was along every time the kids had their eyes examined and I talked to the doctor about his findings. When Brittany cheated on me the infidelity hurt me badly. But what Angela had done was every bit as bad as the cheating had been. Specs4ever July 2021