Back when my grandpa went to school in the town where my family grew up everyone in town went to one 8 room schoolhouse. Grade 1 through grade 8 were on the first floor in 4 rooms with 2 grades to a room. Grades 9 and 10 were in one room each on the second floor and grade 11 and 12 were in the third classroom. The 4th room was the principal’s office. The reason that 9 and 10 had their own rooms was because kids from the surrounding countryside came in to town to attend high school, but since most of them turned 16 by the end of grade 10 they generally dropped out of school and went off to work. At the time my dad went to school the grade school was still in the same schoolhouse, however a new high school had been built for grades 9 through 12. By the time I went to grade school a new school had been built for kindergarten through grade 8, and I then went on to the same high school my dad had attended. When I was in grade 9 the grade school was bursting at the seams, and so was the high school, so the school board decided that they would build a large addition on the high school and they would then have grade 7 and grade 8 move from the other school to the new addition. During my grade 9 and some of my grade 10 years the school was a real mess from all the construction that was going on. But the year I was in grade 10 I saw the students from grade 7 and 8 moved into the new classrooms. Even when I was in the grade school I liked to look at girls that wore glasses. I had some sort of an attraction towards them, and I really liked it if they needed glasses that seemed to have a reasonable amount of power in them. But there weren’t any girls in the lower grades that wore glasses that interested me, and it wasn’t until I reached grade 9 and had a home room teacher that wore a reasonably thick pair of minus glasses that I was able to satisfy my desires by watching her. There was also a girl in grade 11 and grade 12 during the years I was in 9 and 10 that wore a really nice strong pair of glasses. But even though my teacher was unmarried and the girl in grade 12 didn’t seem to have a boyfriend I knew there was no way a 16 year old boy could get anywhere with either of them. Brianna Davis was one of the girls that had been 2 years behind me in grade school. She had first gotten glasses when she was around 8 years old and was in grade 3, but her glasses were just run of the mill minus glasses with a low prescription that really didn’t excite me at all. She was in grade 8 when I was in grade 10, and when the grades 7 and 8 moved over to the high school her glasses didn’t seem to have gotten much thicker than they ever had been. I didn’t pay much attention to Brianna, although I always made sure I acknowledged the existence of any of the girls that wore glasses whenever I saw one of them in the halls. Sometime in April of her grade 8 year I noticed that Brianna had gotten new glasses and it sort of looked to me as if her lenses now had just a little more thickness to them. I turned 17 in grade 11 and I knew that Brianna would be turning 15 in grade 9. I was very surprised when school went back in September of that year and I noticed that Brianna had gotten new glasses during the summer holidays, because she had only gotten her other pair in early April. And the lenses in those new glasses now appeared to have a much nicer and more noticeable amount of lens thickness to them. Brianna looked like she had stronger lenses in her glasses than any of the other girls that had gotten their glasses during their grade school years. Brianna’s new glasses still were not what I would call really thick enough to be memorable though. Brianna wore the glasses that she had gotten just before school started for about 7 months. I noticed that she got new glasses again around the Easter break, and now her new glasses were starting to creep into the range where they began to excite me a bit whenever I saw her. Now I made sure that I smiled and said hi to her whenever I saw her. Brianna didn’t strike me as being good enough looking that she would attract any of the other guys, but if her myopic progression continued at the rate that it had over the last year I didn’t want to lose out. Don’t take this the wrong way. She was cute enough, and her body was starting to fill out nicely, but there were a lot more girls around the school that appeared to be a lot sexier and more attractive than Brianna was. And, if it hadn’t been for her glasses I likely wouldn’t have even taken a second look at her. My dad owned a gravel pit and a few dump trucks. I worked for him in the summer, loading trucks and feeding the crusher. Dad wanted me to go on to college or university, but I was seriously thinking about quitting school after finishing grade 12 and working at the pit. We had about 10 of our own dump trucks, and Dad also hired other dump truck owners to haul for him when we were really busy. One day in late August Nick Davis came into the pit to get loaded and I saw that Brianna was sitting on the passenger side of his truck. I knew that Brianna’s dad was named Joe, but I hadn’t connected the dots enough to figure out that Nick and Joe were related. Nick walked over to the loader to get his load ticket from me and I asked him if he was related to Brianna. He told me that Brianna was his niece and also his god daughter. Things were not as backed up in the pit as they often get so I gave Nick his ticket and jumped down from the loader to go over and say hi to Brianna. Brianna seemed genuinely happy that I had noticed her and had wanted to say hello to her. The first think I noticed was that her breasts had jumped a few sizes over the summer and now she had what could be considered a decent pair of breasts. We chatted for a couple of minutes before I spotted another truck coming down into the pit to get loaded and I told Brianna that I had to get back to work, but maybe we could go out on a date after school started back in a couple of weeks. Her reply was that her dad wouldn’t let her date until she turned 16 in November, so I told her that I guessed I could wait until November and a huge smile spread across her face. A few days later Nick came back to work for us for another day and after I had loaded him, when he came over to get his ticket, he asked me if I was serious about asking Brianna out on a date. I told him I was, and Nick said that he would speak to his brother to see if he would relax his rather strict rules on Brianna. “You seem like a good kid Chris. You are a hard worker, and after you spoke to Brianna the other day and told her you would like to date her she was walking on air for the rest of the day. She was originally pretty upset that day because she had been to see her eye doctor the day before and she needs stronger glasses again.” Nick told me. This conversation with Nick occurred only a few days before school went back and after he told me that Brianna was getting new glasses again I was quite looking forward to seeing her wearing them. The glasses that she had been wearing the day she rode with her Uncle Nick had just been powerful enough to attract me and I was anticipating seeing her in her new glasses. But she had not gotten the new glasses yet, and when I saw her at school on the first day she was still wearing her old ones. I walked up to her and I could see her eyes scrunch up to try to focus enough to identify me before I got close enough to her so that she could focus on me and see me clearly. We made small talk for a few minutes, chatting about her uncle Nick and my job at the pit before I was able to ask her when she was getting her new glasses. “How did you know that I needed new glasses?” Brianna asked. “Your uncle mentioned that you had just been for another eye exam and that you needed new glasses again. And I could see you doing some heavy duty squinting to see if you could recognize me when I walked up to talk to you, so I knew you hadn’t gotten them yet. ” I replied. “They called to tell mom they were in late yesterday afternoon. We didn’t have enough time to get them yesterday so I am going to walk over to pick them up after we are finished school today.” Brianna said. “Do you want me to walk with you? I’d love to see how you look wearing them.” I said. “I don’t know if I want anyone to see them yet. My eyes are changing so rapidly that my dad just couldn’t afford to get me the thinner lenses and the optician told me that my new lenses would be pretty thick.” Brianna replied. “You are going to have to wear them no matter how thick they are. You might as well show them to me so I will know if I still want to ask you to go out with me after you turn 16.” I responded. “That would be just my luck if you didn’t want to go out with me after you see my new glasses. I don’t know what you said to my uncle Nick, but he talked to my dad about you and my dad said if you asked me out on a date I could go out with you before I had my birthday, but you had to get me home by 11.” Brianna told me. “Seriously? Well, if I were you I wouldn’t worry about me seeing you wearing your new glasses then. I think you are pretty cute wearing your old ones and I doubt that your new ones will make that much difference even if they are a little thicker.” I answered. “That makes me feel a little better Chris. But don’t build my hopes up before you see me wearing them.” Brianna said. We agreed to meet in front of the school after the 3:30 dismissal bell. Brianna was there first and she waited for me to come out. I spotted her long before she was able to see me and I realized that her eyesight really had gotten a lot worse. I was quite looking forward to seeing her wearing her new glasses and I hoped that they were a lot thicker, but there was no way I couldn’t tell her that. She just wouldn’t understand. I was driving the old company pickup truck that my dad let me drive around. It had taken a lot of work on my part to get it clean and sort of presentable, but at least it was a set of wheels. I opened the passenger side door for Brianna, and I apologized for the condition of the truck. She didn’t seem to mind and she realized that it was only an old work truck. We rode downtown and I parked fairly close to the only optical store in town. The optician recognized Brianna as we walked in the door, and she sat her right down at the fitting desk while she went to the back of the store to get her new glasses. The anticipation was killing me. She brought out the new glasses and Brianna removed her old pair to allow the lady to slide the new ones onto Brianna’s face. As Brianna had suggested, they were thick. The lenses stuck out about 2 mm to the front, and there was around 4 mm of thickness hidden by the plastic frame. Then there was about 9mm of lens showing to the rear of the frame. That was about 15 mm of lens thickness and was likely close to 5/8” I liked the shape of the mottled brown and caramel and black plastic of the cat’s eye frame, and it went well with Brianna’s medium brown hair. Brianna turned towards me, giving me a full frontal view and my heart melted when I saw her wearing these glasses with the lights of the store reflecting in the plano fronts of her lenses. These glasses were perfect, and I could tell that my attraction to Brianna was stronger than ever. “I didn’t realize when we ordered those frames Brianna that the lenses would be so thick that the temples would not fold closed. But you will be wearing them all the time so as long as you are careful with them at night that shouldn’t be a problem. If it is then the only thing we can do is to send them back and they can grind some of the lens off the rear, but you won’t like the appearance.” Gail, the optician said. “These glasses won’t leave my face except when I am sleeping, so that shouldn’t matter Gail.” Brianna replied. “How is your vision Brianna?” Gail asked. “It is a lot better than it was with my old glasses. But things still look a little fuzzy off in the distance.” Brianna said. “Can you read that sign over the counter Brianna?” Gail asked. “No, not really. It is a little too blurry.” Brianna replied. “I had better let Dr. Martin see you and check your vision before you leave Brianna. Do you have a bit of time?” Gail asked. “I do, but what about you Chris? Can you stay?” Brianna asked me. “Sure I can. How long will that take Gail?” I asked. “He is just about finished with his patient now. I can slide you right in Brianna.” Gail replied. Gail had left the prescription slip on the table, and when she left with Brianna to take her into see Dr. Martin I picked up the slip and looked at it. It read -9.75 x -1.50 x 78 and the other eye read -9.50 x -1.75 x 88. Then there was a notation of 1 base up for the OD side and another notation of 1 base down for the OS. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I suspected that it was for a little bit of prism. Brianna’s old glasses had been placed into a new case, and I picked it up and slipped it and the prescription slip into my jacket pocket. It took about 15 more minutes before Brianna came back out of Dr. Martin’s office and there were tears in her eyes. “What is the matter Brianna?” I asked. “Three weeks Chris. It has only been 3 weeks since I had my eyes tested, and I need stronger glasses already. When is this going to stop – when I go blind?” Brianna asked tearfully. “I doubt that you will go blind. But your glasses might have to be a lot stronger before your myopia stops progressing. From what I have read about myopia in younger people it might continue until you are in your early 20’s. What are they going to do about fixing those glasses so you can see properly?” I queried. “Gail is going to order new lenses to put in my new frame. She is going to put a rush on the order so that I can have them by this time next week.” Brianna replied. “Did the doctor give you your new prescription slip?” I asked. “No, but he did tell me that my eyes have gotten -0.50D worse in only 3 weeks so he is going to order the new lenses with a whole diopter more strength than these lenses have in them. That means they are going to be even thicker than these are and these are terribly thick. Will you still ask me out then Chris?” Brianna asked. “Sure I will Brianna. There is a school dance this Friday night. Would you, Brianna Davis, allow me the pleasure of accompanying you to this dance?” I asked. “I would love to attend the dance with you Christopher Wilson. But I will have to be home by 11 pm.” Brianna replied. Brianna and I went to the school dance and we had a great time. Brianna was not one of the more popular girls, and I was just one of the regular guys. I didn’t play any sports so I was not chased after by any of the girls who liked the jocks and while I suppose some heads were talking about the fact that I had shown up with Brianna I really didn’t care. Her glasses, which would likely be considered as a turn off for most of the guys, made Brianna someone very special to me, and to me her glasses were actually a turn on. The following Tuesday after school I took Brianna back to the optician’s to have the new lenses put in her glasses. These lenses looked to be about 2, or maybe 3 mm thicker than the other ones. After she finished Gail put each of the lenses she had taken out into the little plastic bags that the new lenses had come in and she gave them to Brianna, who didn’t have anywhere to put them. She asked if I would carry them for her, and I put them in my shirt pocket for her. I had managed to hide the fact that I had Brianna’s old glasses as well as the prescription for the now loose lenses. When I got home I had taken a piece of white paper and had, by passing each of the lenses in the glasses back and forth across the paper to see where the edge of the paper made a straight line through the lens and onto the paper, determined where the optical center of each lens was located. Each lens center was 31 mm, so that meant that Brianna’s pd was 62 mm. I had a plan in my mind and I was pretty sure what I was going to do would not be appreciated by Brianna if I told her before I did it. My plan was to go online and order Brianna a new pair of glasses with at least a -2D stronger prescription than the prescription in the lenses she had just gotten. I found a frame that looked very similar to the frame she was presently wearing. She liked that frame, and it looked quite nice on her face. I added the -2.00D to her present prescription and went to place the order, but before I did I decided another -0.50D would not even be noticed. Her new lenses were going to be -13.25 x -1.50 x 78 and -13.00 x -1.75 x 88 with the same base up and base down prism. At the last minute I added a bifocal add of +2.00 and I gave her 2 degrees of base out prism for each eye. From what I had read online, I figured that if I didn’t specify a plano base for the glasses they might make it with a minus base curve, so that was why I had done the bifocal add. It is possible to obtain bifocal lens blanks that have a minus base curve but they are not something that is stocked by most optical labs. It took a couple of weeks for the new glasses to come in, but it was going to be quite a while before I could get Brianna to try wearing them. She was still having a hard time getting used to the thickness of her other glasses, and the ones I had just ordered were even thicker. The lenses, which I had ordered as regular plastic ones again, had to be at least 25 mm thick, and this was after they had beveled the edge of the lens. I had chosen a frame that had the temple hinges set back a little more than the ones in the frame that Brianna was presently wearing, so these glasses would fold up to fit in the case. I was going to have to be satisfied with just looking at them for a while longer though, because Brianna had not shown any signs of needing stronger glasses yet, and she had passed the eye test that allowed her to get her learner’s permit the day after her birthday on the 9th of November. After Brianna turned 16 her dad allowed her to stay out until midnight so we had a little more freedom to do what we wanted to do. Neither Brianna nor I had a large group of friends, so we generally just went out together to a school dance or to the 9 pm movie instead of the early show. The dances generally ended at midnight, but the movies were usually over by 11:30, so we had a little more time to spend just kissing and hugging in the front seat of my pickup before she had to be home. I was very careful about the time I got her home because I didn’t want her dad to have any reason to ground Brianna. My parents had met Brianna a few times. My mom’s reaction to Brianna’s glasses was fairly predictable and whenever I talked about Brianna she told me that she seemed like a nice girl but it was too bad she had such terrible eyesight and needed those awful looking thick glasses. I knew I was never going to be able to change mom’s mind, so all I told her was that Brianna was a really nice girl and I didn’t mind her wearing glasses as long as she could see well. I did wonder what mom would have thought if she had ever snooped through my room and had found my hiding spot for the pair of glasses that I hoped would be Brianna’s next pair. They were so thick she would likely have had a fit. Christmas and New Year’s came and went with no indication that Brianna might need stronger glasses. School was out for a week during March and I spent my days working for my dad. When I had ordered Brianna’s glasses I also ordered myself 2 pairs of glasses that had a prescription of -2.50D and I had been wearing the prescription sunglasses whenever I was driving around. For the whole week of March break I wore those sun glasses while I was driving the loader, and no one seemed to notice. My eyes still reverted back to normal whenever I took the glasses off, but during the week that I wore them constantly I did notice that by the end of the week I was taking longer to be able to see clearly without them. I was turning 18 in April and if what I had read on the internet was true I would soon be too old to be able to induce any true myopia. I felt that I would like to have an eventual prescription of around -6D of myopia and if I wanted to reach that goal I had to start right now. My first step was to tell mom that I was having trouble seeing things in the distance. Her reaction to that was that I must have caught some kind of bug from Brianna that affected my eyes so I had to tell her that you could not catch myopia. You either developed it, or you didn’t. That allowed me to make an appointment with Dr. Martin to have my eyes examined. I wore my prescription sunglasses as much as I possibly could for the week before my appointment and at night when I was in my room doing my homework I wore my clear glasses for my studies. When I parked my truck in his parking lot and walked inside I actually felt that I could not see very clearly. Once inside I picked up a magazine, and held it fairly close to my eyes while I read until the receptionist called me up. A girl in a while smock took me into one of the rooms and sat me down in front of a machine that I had to look through and try to focus on some objects that went from clear to blurred. When she was finished the machine printed out something and she attached the print out to a manila file folder with my name on it. The doctor came into the room and he asked me a few questions about what was happening with my vision. I told him that things off in the distance were quite blurry, and that my night vision was really terrible. He told me that the lensometer showed I had become a little nearsighted, which pleased me because I could now legitimately wear glasses. He swung the machine with all the lenses in front of my eyes and he asked me if I could read all the letters. I told him they were a little blurred, so he increased the strength of the lenses and I could tell when his machine reached roughly the same power I had in the glasses I already wore. He asked me how everything looked, and I told him that everything was pretty clear now. He then wrote me out a prescription and I left his office without ordering a pair of glasses. When I was back in my truck I looked at the prescription slip and I was very pleased to see that he had prescribed me -2.00D for both eyes. That was great. I went home and told mom I needed to wear glasses now and that I had ordered a pair that would be in within a few days. We didn’t have any vision care insurance so no one was going to ask me for the receipt. Three days later I came home wearing my clear glasses and they soon became a permanent fixture on my face. I had told Brianna a few weeks earlier that I thought I needed glasses and she was actually pleased that I had now joined the ranks of the glasses wearers. Brianna felt that I looked quite good wearing them and that made me feel good. As soon as I possibly could I ordered myself a new pair of -4.00D glasses online. The frame was so similar that no one could tell that they were any different. I also ordered a new pair of tinted sunglasses but I ordered them with a -5.00D prescription, which was more than double what my real prescription had been. When the clear glasses came in I immediately switched to wearing them, and no one even noticed that these glasses were a little stronger. The new glasses were very easy to wear and on sunny days I managed to wear the -5D sunglasses without any problems. I was beginning to think that my goal of -6.00D would be easily obtainable. Brianna had been doing a lot of practice driving and she was almost to the point where she could try her driving exam. She decided that she would wait a couple of months until after school was out for the summer, but before the date arrived for her road test she had discovered that her eyesight had really started to deteriorate again. I didn’t say anything for about a month and by then she was really complaining a lot about not being able to see things clearly. I then decided it was time for me to tell Brianna about the glasses I had ordered for her. She could not understand how I possibly could have ordered her a pair of glasses without her first having an eye exam so I explained that the progression of myopia was a fairly predictable thing. I told her that the glasses I had ordered for her to try were likely a little stronger than she really needed but by wearing them it would be possible they would allow her to go a little longer before she needed new glasses again. She then decided that she wanted to try them. I knew she would be horrified by the thickness of the lenses if she saw them first so I removed her old glasses and had her close her eyes. I slipped the new glasses out of the case, and placed them gently on her face, sliding them up almost to the bridge of her nose. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and looked around through the stronger lenses. It took her a couple of minutes of focusing before she told me that everything was really clear now. I breathed a sigh of relief as I had been a little worried that she might not be able to tolerate the base out prism along with the slightly stronger lenses, but it looked as if I might have worried for nothing. She did question me about the bifocal line, and I got her to read a passage from a pocket book I was carrying with me in my pickup. She found that it was easier to read the print through the bifocal segment, and I explained to her that hopefully reading through the lower bifocal prescription might slow down her myopic progression. Brianna wondered how she would explain her new glasses to her parents, and I simply told her to tell them I had paid for her eye exam and her new glasses. I watched her as she took her glasses off and brought them up close enough to her eyes to see what they looked like. As I expected she was rather upset that they were so thick, but after she had worn them for the short time she had them on her face she realized that this was the prescription she now needed and that she was just going to have to accept the thickness. I loved seeing them on her face. Looking at her from the front the cut in was amazing and as she swung her head slightly to the side the power rings that showed the lens thickness looked to go on and on. And when she was looking straight ahead and I looked at her glasses from the side, the thickness of the lens completely hid her eyeball. The lens was so thick that it actually looked like she had those side shields that people who wear safety glasses have. I was very happy that I had ordered these glasses for Brianna, and I was also quite pleased that she was able to see well through them. When I took Brianna home wearing her new glasses her parents were noticeably upset with the fact that their daughter now had to wear such thick glasses. But after Brianna told them that these glasses were what she now needed to see properly they calmed down a little. I think it helped that they realized that I didn’t have any problem accepting the fact that Brianna’s new glasses were very thick. I could understand their concern. After all, what parent wants to see one of their children wearing what would be considered coke bottle lenses in their glasses? Brianna had worn her new glasses for about 2 weeks before she took her driving exam. She had to have another eye test at the motor vehicle division, and she passed with better than 20/30 vision. She then took the driving part, and she also passed that so she could now drive my truck, or her parent’s car. My dad let me have Brianna drop me at work and use the truck during the day anytime she needed a vehicle so I knew dad had accepted Brianna’s poor uncorrected eyesight and her thick glasses. Brianna had gotten a job that summer as a sales clerk in a clothing store and she told me that she was saving her money for when she got married. I hadn’t asked her to marry me and I kidded her about maybe it might not be us getting married, but she just laughed it off and said it didn’t matter who she married. I think she knew that it would be us though. That whole summer I wore my -5D sunglasses and as the summer came to an end I could tell that my -4D clear glasses were no longer quite strong enough to give me really good vision. It was time to order myself a pair of -6.00D clear glasses. I wavered about ordering myself a pair of -6D sunglasses, but since the extra diopter of power in my other sunglasses had helped me draw closer to my goal I decided that I would raise the bar a little and would order -7D lenses for my sunglasses. I wasn’t worried that they might be too strong for me right now, as I could always wear clip on sunglasses until my eyes adapted to them. My mom had softened her stand on Brianna’s glasses and her poor eyesight a little when I started to wear glasses. But she really stopped saying anything after my younger sister Carrie, who was 5 years my junior, was prescribed glasses just before she turned 13. I knew that Carrie was nearsighted because she asked me if she could try my glasses after I had first gotten them and she told me she could see much better when she wore them. I had told her that the prescription was -2.00D, although it was actually -2.50D and I was not terribly surprised when Carrie was prescribed -2.00D glasses as her first pair. My brother Joshua, who was 15, had his eyes checked at the same time as Carrie, but he didn’t need glasses. Carrie was a school friend of Brianna’s younger sister Amy, and when Carrie showed up at school with her new glasses Amy tried them on and discovered that she was also nearsighted. Her mom was working and couldn’t get any time off so she had Brianna take Amy to see Dr. Martin. Amy was prescribed a pair of glasses that were very similar in power to my sisters. Now both of the Davis girls were glasses wearers but at this time I did not expect either Carrie or Amy to ever naturally become as myopic as Brianna was. I had graduated from grade 12 and I had no interest in going on with my schooling. I had not applied to any universities or colleges, much to my dad’s dismay. But he realized that my main interest was the gravel business so he made sure that I continued working all winter, even though there was quite a slowdown in construction that year. There wasn’t much snow during the winter, but on the nice sunny days the reflections from the sun on the snow made it necessary for me to wear my sunglasses a lot. This allowed me to get used to the -7D prescription that I had in my sunglasses and I was enjoying the time I spent wearing them. .I had almost reached the point where I was going to order myself a pair of -8D clear glasses as well as a pair of -8D sunglasses. I had raised my goal from -6D up to possibly -9D or maybe even -10D, but I was afraid that this might not ever be possible so I felt it would be best to take it easy for a while and only increase the power of my lenses by a diopter at a time. Brianna’s sister Amy had only worn her new glasses for about 3 months when she started to complain that she could no longer see as well as she could when she first got them. The eye doctor prescribed a sizeable increase for Amy and now she needed -4.50D lenses in her new glasses. Amy got a 2 for 1 special offer and she ended up with a second pair of glasses. Without anyone being any the wiser my sister Carrie had gotten Amy to let her wear her second pair, and Carrie was now wearing -4.50D glasses also. I thought that something looked different about Carrie’s glasses and I studied them for a while before I figured out that they seemed much stronger than the -2.00D lenses that had been first prescribed for her. After seeing Amy wearing her -4.50D glasses I realized what Carrie must have done and I took Amy aside and asked her if she had given Carrie one of her new pairs of glasses. She didn’t want to admit it, but she finally confessed that Carrie had borrowed one pair of her new glasses and was wearing them all the time. I was quite surprised. I knew I was extremely optically obsessed, but it was a shock to me to find out that my sister possibly was as well. I wondered just how high she wanted to increase her prescription so I decided I would tell her I knew what she was doing and ask her what she really wanted. She was quite upset when I talked to her and she was very hesitant about admitting anything, however I told her that I knew what she was doing, that I had done the same thing, and that I could help her attain whatever prescription she wanted. Finally she confessed that she loved the thick lenses that Brianna had in her glasses and that she wanted to wear glasses that were at least that thick someday. I asked her how Amy felt about possibly needing stronger glasses and Carrie told me that Amy didn’t care if her glasses needed to be thicker or not. All Amy wanted to do was to be able to see properly and she didn’t care how thick her glasses had to be. I showed Carrie my new -8.00D plain glasses and my sunglasses that had just come in and I told her that they were now -8.00D and that I had ordered them online. I also told her that I could do the same for her if she wanted me to. She didn’t give me an answer, but just said maybe. On Monday I wore my new -8.00D glasses to work. It was easier switching between the sunglasses and the plain glasses now because the prescription was the same. I did feel a little tug on my eyes because of the slightly stronger prescription, but this was nothing that I couldn’t handle. I had ordered the thinner lens option in both pairs so that I could hide the fact that the lenses were stronger but somehow my dad picked up on it and asked me if I had gotten stronger glasses. Of course I had to admit to him that I had. Brianna had been doing great wearing her new glasses. She admitted that they were just perfect for her eyes and that she could see wonderfully well with them. I had decided that before I ordered her another new pair I would take her into a specialist in high myopia in the city so that she could have her eyes examined thoroughly. I called in September after she had gone back to grade 11 to see when I could get an appointment for her. The earliest appointment was at the end of January and this was a perfect time for me to get off as things were pretty quiet around the pit. Dad loaned me the good company pickup, and I drove Brianna into the city for a comprehensive eye exam. The myopia specialist allowed me to come in and sit with Brianna while he and his staff did all the necessary testing. Once his examination of her inner eyes was complete he did a very thorough vision exam as well. He pronounced her present prescription to be just a little weaker than she really required, and I was a bit surprised at that as she had not yet started to complain. He also found that the 2 degrees of base out prism was not only necessary, but it needed to be increased to 3 degrees for each eye. The 1 degree of base up and base down prism was still required and had remained the same. He also increased her bifocal add to +2.50D and he found that the astigmatism in both eyes had increased a little. Her new prescription read OS -14.00 x -2.50 x 78 and OS -14.00 x -2.50 x 88 with 3 degrees base out and 1 degree up for the OD and 1 degree base down for the OS. The new add was now +2.50D. I had Brianna come to the house with me and together we sat down at the computer and we selected a couple of new frames that she liked well enough to order for her with her new lenses in them. This time there would be no possibility of ordering regular plastic lenses because I wanted to add another -1.50D to her spherical power. I was going to have to order these new glasses in a higher index lens. I pretended I had ordered her glasses and then I took her back home. I went back on to the website later that evening and changed her spherical prescription to read -15.50D for both eyes but I left everything else as the doctor had prescribed. Then I paid for both pairs with my own credit card, but first I chose a frame similar to the same frame of Amy’s that my sister had been wearing. I then ordered this pair with a pair of -6.50D lenses. I wasn’t sure if Carrie would be happy that I had done this or not, but I wasn’t going to give her any choice. At the last minute I picked out another frame and ordered Carrie a second pair of glasses. If she wanted to she could give them to Amy to wear so they would still have the same prescription and would be able to trade glasses. When the new glasses came in I gave Brianna her pair first. She had chosen well, because the frame looked extremely nice on her face. The high index lenses looked strong, but they were not as thick as her old ones and the prescription in them came right to the outer edge of the frame instead of being beveled back like her old ones. She found the higher prescription to be a little hard to get used to and she wanted to switch back to her old glasses, but I wouldn’t let her, and within a few days she felt that she had gotten used to her new ones and she could see quite well wearing them. I could tell that Carrie was quite enamored with Brianna’s new glasses because she kept looking at Brianna all the time. I had the 2 new pairs of -6.50D glasses hidden in my room, but I wanted to wait until Carrie asked me about the possibility of me getting her stronger glasses before I said anything. It took another month before Carrie came to me and asked me if I could possibly get her a pair of glasses with stronger lenses in them soon. I told her I had already ordered them and if she came up to my room I would let her try them on. She loved the looks of the stronger lenses, but was a little surprised that they were not any thicker than the lenses in the -4.50D glasses that she had gotten from Amy about 6 months earlier were. I explained that I had ordered lenses with a higher index to them so that people would not notice that these glasses were stronger. I was a little surprised that Carrie was able to put these glasses on and see quite well with them, as I was sure they were a little too strong for her. But I hadn’t taken into account the fact that Carrie was still young enough that she not only had a lot of accommodation, but her eyes had likely gotten a little worse on their own. I showed her both pairs of glasses and told her I had ordered the other pair for Amy, but she was only to give them to her if Amy wanted to wear them. Carrie wore the new glasses to school the next day. When I got home from work she came into my room and told me that Amy had tried her new glasses on and had loved them. Amy could also see quite well wearing them, so either Amy also had good accommodation for her age, or else her prescription had jumped a bit, which would not be surprising because Amy had jumped from the -2.00D that she had been originally prescribed to her new prescribed prescription of -4.50 in only around 3 months. Now both girls would be wearing -6.50D glasses and it had been under a year since they had gotten their first glasses. Amy and Carrie were set for a while. My -8D glasses were still noticeably strong for my eyes, so I wasn’t going to be able to increase my prescription for a while. And Brianna felt that her glasses were just perfect still. I had no one to order new glasses for and this made life a little boring. I loved to watch my sister reading or doing her homework because she made sure that she brought her face up really close to her work. Mom would often tell her to move her head back, but Carrie would simply tell mom that she couldn’t see well from any further back and mom would quit finally nagging her. I had read enough about myopia and myopic progression to know that a person who held their reading material at a very short distance from their eyes would probably develop a lot more myopia by doing this. But I didn’t know how Carrie had known this so one day I decided I needed to have a chat with her. My now 14 year old sister surprised me by how much she knew about myopia and what progression she could expect. She also knew that if she wore glasses that were as much as -4D more than her prescription she would experience a faster progression, although a -3D over correction would be much easier to wear. We had no idea what her real prescription was, because her only eye exam had been when she first got glasses. I suggested to Carrie that she needed to go back to see the eye doctor and have an eye exam, and while she agreed that she should she was worried about what he would say when he discovered that her old glasses were way too weak for her. My suggestion was that she should tell the doctor that she could see just fine until about 2 months ago, but she didn’t want to get stronger glasses so she had just hoped her eyes would get better. When they kept getting worse she realized that she needed to have her eyes tested. My suggestion worked. Carrie told mom and dad that her eyes had gotten a lot worse and she needed new glasses badly. I had suggested that I could take her to the doctor because things were still pretty slow at the pit, and dad told me that it would be very helpful if I did that for mom. Since I was the one taking Carrie in to the eye doctor I had given her my -7D sunglasses to wear whenever she could for a few days before her appointment because I felt that getting used to even another -0.50D would help to her get a stronger prescription. Carrie was quite happy with my -7D sunglasses and she told me that they made everything very clear. It was not a real surprise to me when she showed me her new prescription and it read -6.75D for each eye. I talked it over with Carrie as we drove home to see what sort of prescription she would like to try, and she decided that she would like to order glasses that gave her a full -4D over correction. This meant that I needed to order her a pair of glasses that were -10.75D and I knew that even with high index lenses they would still look pretty strong. When I told her that this was what I was going to do she surprised me by asking me to order her new glasses with a prescription of -11D. “That is way too strong. You will have a lot of trouble getting used to them.” I told her. “It is only a little bit stronger than the -10.75D you were going to order for me. It might take some effort, but I am sure that after a few days of wearing them I will get used to the extra little bit of power.” Carrie said. That ended any discussion. But what surprised me was that when I suggested that Carrie should order hi index lenses she was adamant about wanting just the regular plastic ones. There was no sense arguing with her, as she was the one who was going to have to face the world wearing these thick glasses. The hardest part for her would be facing our parents, especially mom. But if she could stand the flak then I wasn’t going to worry. I ordered her 3 pairs of glasses with the -11.00D prescription, all in regular plastic lenses, and the one pair had the dark sunglass tint on the lenses. I also ordered myself a pair of glasses with a -9.00D prescription and another pair in exactly the same frame as I was wearing for my current -8.00D with a -10.00D prescription. I had decided that I would try to push my prescription up to -10.00D and then I would stop. With the new high index lenses -10D was not going to make my lenses thick enough that people would give me any more than a second glance. I also ordered myself a third pair, also with a -10D prescription with tinted lenses for sunglasses. I figured if I reached the point where I could easily wear the -9.00D glasses full time then I should be able to wear the-10D ones out in very bright sunlight without a problem. It took about 3 weeks for the 6 new pairs of glasses to come in. Carrie immediately took her 3 pairs and started wearing them, but I wasn’t quite ready to switch to the -9D ones yet. I did wear them around a bit, but they were taking some getting used to. Carrie didn’t seem to have any problem adapting to her -4.25D stronger lenses, although I did notice that she was not bringing everything as close to her eyes as she had been doing before. I asked Carrie if she had offered her spare pair of glasses to Amy yet, and she told me that they were so thick looking that Amy did not want to wear them. She also told me that she knew the -6.50D glasses that Amy was still wearing were no longer strong enough for her. I thought about it for a few minutes and then I decided I would now switch to my -9D ones and would suggest that Carrie give Amy my old -8D ones to try. I had chosen a man’s frame for all of my glasses, but the exact same frame was being worn by a lot of women these days so they would not look out of place on Amy’s face. My pupillary distance was 64mm, and Amy and Carrie both had pd’s of 63mm so I didn’t think a 1mm difference would be critical. Carrie gave Amy my old -8.00D glasses and when I asked her how Amy had liked them Carrie told me that Amy found that they were almost perfect for her. Brianna knew I had given Amy my old glasses and when we were out at a dance on Saturday night she thanked me for helping her sister out. I had never really told Brianna what I was doing in attempting to induce a little more myopia in myself as well as in her, but I think she had her suspicions. Her -15.50D glasses were no longer too strong for her, and actually I had noticed her giving things off in the distance a bit of a squint from time to time. I wondered if she would wait until the end of the upcoming summer holidays before she went back to see the local eye doctor again. I wasn’t worried that he would find that Brianna’s glasses were stronger than the specialist had prescribed because he had not been informed that Brianna had been to the city to see the specialist. I did feel that it would be a good idea to have Brianna’s prescription checked by the doctor before ordering her another pair of glasses though. I had been wearing my -9D glasses for a few months now, and they seemed to be giving me very good vision. I was also switching to the -10D sunglasses to wear on sunny days, and I was beginning to feel that it was about time to switch to the clear -10D ones for daily wear as well. Part of me wanted to wear them and get it over with, because I was positive I was not going to attempt to increase my prescription above -10D, but another part of me was a little hesitant to reach my goal, as I had originally set my goal as being -6D. I had not realized it would be as easy as it had been to increase my prescription up to -10D in only a couple of years. My sister Carrie had now reached the point where she could bring her face almost right into the pages of whatever book she was reading while wearing those very strong -11D glasses. This had only taken her about 6 months, and I asked her one day in front of mom how her vision was with her new glasses. She surprised me a little when she told me that she was having trouble again seeing things off in the distance, but when I saw the expression on mom’s face I knew why Carrie had said that. She wanted to prepare mom for the fact that she was going to need even thicker glasses soon. I knew that a few weeks ago Carrie had given Amy one of the 2 pairs of clear lensed -11D glasses, and that Amy had been wearing them. I had asked Carrie about it, and she told me that Amy had no longer been able to see very well with my old -8.00D glasses and she had been surprised when Carrie told her to try the -11D ones on with how well she could see when she was wearing them. It had not taken very long for Amy to have her prescription increase to beyond -8.00D and I wondered just what it might have been when she agreed to wear the -11.00D ones. It was really very strange. Here Carrie and I were not really naturally highly myopic, but we wanted to become more nearsighted, and Brianna and Amy appeared to both be natural high myopes and couldn’t help themselves from becoming more and more nearsighted. I wasn’t sure if Carrie really had gotten her eyes to increase enough so that her -11.00D glasses were actually the correct prescription for her or not. She was, at age 15, now at the point where most girls had the biggest increases in their myopia, and she had really given herself quite a push by wearing a -4.25D over correction. Carrie and Amy were both in grade 9 now, and Brianna was in her final year of high school. Brianna had surprised me when she did not want to have her eyes checked before school started because I had felt that she was doing a bit of squinting at things in the distance. I knew that she was trying to deny that her eyes had gotten worse, but I knew that I had better not push her too hard or she might find out that I was far more interested in eyesight than a person normally would be. I did ask Carrie if she thought she was ready for stronger glasses, and she told me that she thought she would wait for a while longer to see if Amy’s eyes got worse soon. I doubted that would happen, because Amy had not been wearing the -11.00D glasses for all that long a period of time, and I told Carrie that it might take as much as a year before Amy needed to get stronger glasses. Carrie surprised me when she told me that Amy was already finding that the -11.00D glasses were no more than strong enough for her. One of the online forums about vision and eyesight that I belonged to had talked about an optometrist in one of the suburbs of the nearest city that had a reputation for giving his patients a little stronger prescription if they told him they were having trouble seeing well after dusk. It was also suggested that he was known to crank up the numbers a bit if it appeared that the patient he was examining was right at the age where they could expect a bit of myopic progression. I told Carrie about this doctor and I suggested that both she and Amy might want to go to see him. Carrie liked the idea, and I suggested that before we made an appointment we should first attempt to see what sort of a prescription both she and Amy could expect to be prescribed. Carrie invited Amy over one afternoon and I made sure I was home from work early. We set up an eye chart in my room, and I had it all measured out beforehand. First I tried both girls with my -10D glasses. Neither girl could see past the 20/80 line. Then they both tried with their own -11.00D glasses and they managed to read the 20/50 line. This surprised me as it had only been about 3 months since Amy had started wearing the -11.00D glasses. I did not bother trying to get Brianna over to try to determine if her eyes had gotten worse, as I knew they had, and I knew she was upset about it. I made appointments for myself, Carrie, Amy and Brianna with this eye doctor I had heard about. Brianna really didn’t want to go, but Carrie and Amy, who had also noticed her struggling to see things, encouraged her. I borrowed mom’s car and the four of us headed for the city to see the eye doctor. I had thought of wearing my -9.00D glasses to my own appointment, as I wanted to see if I would actually be prescribed the -10.00D I was wearing, but after trying them on I realized that it would be rather dangerous for me to try driving while wearing them. My eyes seemed to require the -10D prescription I was wearing. We arrived safely at the strip mall where this doctor was located, and we went inside to sign in. The first thing that happened was that a nurse took us each into a little room where she checked the prescription in our glasses. Then she checked our vision with an auto refractor. Since I was the driver I was called in to see the doctor first because if he needed to use drops in my eyes it would be better if I had a little while for the effects to wear off before I had to drive home. The doctor was fairly fast. He told me that he didn’t think I needed the drops for my refraction because I was just quite nearsighted. Finally he was satisfied with my answers as to which was better after my reading of the letters on the wall and he let me go back to the waiting room. Brianna was already in another examination room, and while I would have liked to have been in there with her, I wasn’t going to get the chance. I had made sure though that I told the doctor that my girlfriend, my sister and her sister had all been having a lot of trouble with their eyes and that they had to get stronger prescriptions within only a few months. I told him of Brianna picking up her new glasses only to find that her eyes had gotten worse in only 3 weeks and the doctor had to provide her with new lenses for free. I also made sure I told him that none of them could see well after dark and I also told him that the younger girls had generally worn the same prescription and had been used to switching glasses back and forth. Amy had been in for her exam before Carrie. When Carrie was finished the doctor wanted Amy to come back in for just a minute and he checked something else. Finally we were all finished. I looked at my new prescription slip and I was shocked. My slip read -11.50 x -0.50 x 96 and -11.50 x -0.50 x 90. I had not wanted an increase. I was doing fine with my -10D glasses. But here it was, printed in black and white. I asked Brianna if I could see her new prescription and she handed it to me. It read OD -17.50 x -3.00 x 78 and OS -17.50 x -3.00 x 88. Her prism had increased to 5 degrees base out for both eyes with OD 1 degree base up and OS 1 degree base down. Brianna had disliked the +2D bifocal segment I had put in her glasses a couple of years back, but now he had prescribed a +2.50D multifocal add. This was a very sizeable increase for her. Then I asked to see Carrie and Amy’s new prescriptions and their slips both read -13.50D. It looked to me as if the doctor had added at least -2.00D to their prescriptions. Brianna had a prescription of -10.75D with some astigmatism when she was 15 though, so maybe Carrie and Amy were just in line to have similar prescriptions to Brianna. Now I knew why the doctor had called Amy back in before he gave her the new prescription though. Carrie had obviously been able to take a little more minus than the doctor had first given Amy, and I was willing to be that he had adjusted Amy’s prescription so that it was the same as Carrie’s I wasn’t sure what to do about ordering new glasses for the 4 of us. I knew that Carrie would want me to order her new glasses in the cheapest thickest regular plastic that she could get. Carrie really got off on having really thick glasses, but I wasn’t sure how Amy would feel about that. And Brianna’s glasses were going to be pushing the limit for an online order. I knew that Brianna would want to have her glasses done in the thinnest possible lens option and even then they were going to be really thick. Also I was in a quandary as to what to do about my own glasses. I had planned to stop at -10D. I had observed glasses wearers for quite a while and I felt that as long as a person’s glasses had a prescription that was lower than -10D and was done in a high index lens their glasses didn’t seem to attract much attention. But anything over that caused people to take a second look at the wearer, and possibly cast aspersions on them about their eyesight. I didn’t want that. I was operating a loader, and every once in a while something would happen. The loader would run over a rock on the way to loading a truck and this could cause the loader to tip a little and maybe clip the sideboard of the truck it was loading. If I was wearing thicker glasses and this happened the first thought of the driver would be that the loader operator was half blind and couldn’t see what he was doing. In the end my urge to wear the stronger prescription won out and I ordered myself 2 new pairs of glasses with high index lenses in my new prescription. As I had expected Carrie wanted the cheapest, and thickest lenses she could get. She chose a little larger frame for her new glasses than I thought was advisable, but she was the one who was going to have to wear them, and I simply placed the order. Amy was a little bit more sensible and she chose a similar but smaller frame and went for the medium index lenses. That left Brianna, whose order was a nightmare for the optical lab. I helped her choose a frame that I thought would look great on her, and I ordered her lenses in the highest possible index. Even online her glasses cost over $225.00. When the glasses all came in Carrie loved the looks of hers. They were even thicker than Brianna’s new ones, but I think that was because they had used every bit of the lens to fill the frame. Her lenses were so thick that they looked a little like the ones that Brianna had before, the ones where the lens thickness looked a little like safety side shields. Carrie was thrilled though. Brianna was a little less thrilled as her new glasses had the outer edges of the lenses shaved off. I had looked for and ordered a frame that had the temples set well back so that they could use the whole lens, but they hadn’t and her lenses had a little bit of a myodisc effect to them. But her vision was much better wearing them so eventually she got used to them and quit complaining. Amy didn’t say much about her glasses. She just put them on and wore them. Once in a while she and Carrie would trade glasses, but Amy didn’t really like the thick lenses in Carrie’s glasses and Carrie didn’t care for the thinner ones. I just put my new glasses on and started wearing them. They tugged at my eyes a little bit at first, but I soon adapted to them and was quite happy with my vision with them. As the time grew closer for Brianna to graduate from grade 12 I asked her to marry me. She accepted, and we decided we would be married in August. We did not want a big wedding, and the truth of the matter was that Brianna’s dad would have been hard pressed to pay for one. Once school let out for the summer Brianna and I rented a small house and we spent the time before the wedding getting the house furnished and setting everything up the way we wanted it. The wedding was great and everyone had a lot of fun. Carrie and Amy were bridesmaids and both girls looked really attractive in their matching dresses. I found that I liked Amy’s appearance a little better than that of my own sister. Amy looked to be more like a pretty girl who wore glasses, while Carrie’s thicker lenses in the same prescription made her glasses the focus of her appearance and she looked more like glasses on legs. I knew that Carrie still wanted to push her prescription even higher, but I suspected that in the future she would wait to see if Amy had an increase before she got new glasses for herself. I had accepted my own almost -12D prescription, but I didn’t want any more myopia. I could not function without my glasses and I wondered sometimes how much less than me Brianna could see. Her prescription still excited me every time I looked at her wearing her strong thick glasses. Now that the school years are over for Brianna and myself I wonder what will come next? Specs4ever July 2016