When I look back at my childhood part of me laughs at the fact that I was slave labor. After all, anyone who puts their 6-year-old child to work for 8 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week and only pays them $1.00 a day is really underpaying them. But I never recall feeling that I was overworked and underpaid, probably because I did not yet realize the value of a dollar. I do remember how proud I was of the great job I was doing. All the waitresses and even my mom and dad often told me that I was doing a really good, and important job, so I was happy. Now, I don’t remember how good a job I was actually doing, and I suspect that the job I was doing was really just something to keep me busy and out of everybody’s hair. My parents owned a restaurant that was on the road to a tourist destination. People headed for the beaches in the summer and the roads were packed with cars, especially on the weekends. In the winter the people drove up past the beaches and into the mountains where the ski resorts were. Not as many people came to the restaurant in the winter, and my parents were closed on Tuesday’s and Wednesdays from late Fall into early Spring. Of course, I didn’t work in the winter except sometimes on the weekends. The summer I was 6 was the first summer I worked in the restaurant. My job was to sweep out under the tables and chairs and under the booths where people had dropped crumbs and other particles of food. The job wasn’t really tasking, and I am not sure how good a job I actually did. Heck, I am not sure how good a job I was even expected to do, as I was only a 6 year old kid and it seemed to me that when I was not working the waitresses cleaned the dining area’s up much faster than I could. When there was a lull in the customers in the restaurant my dad would often send me outside with a push broom to sweep the gravel off the asphalt. Some days that seemed like it was much harder work, but like I said, I am sure I was being kept busy and out of everyone’s way. My mom’s mother was looking after my 3 year old sister while I was working and now, many years later I suspect that Gram had not wanted to look after both myself and my sister so I had an important job I had to go to every day – where my mom and dad could keep a close eye on me. One day when I went out to sweep the pavement, I found a case lying on the pavement. I knew it couldn’t have been there for very long, because another car would likely have run over it. I opened the case, and inside was a pair of glasses. I was curious, so I took the glasses out and looked at them. They sort of seemed like they were a girl’s pair, but I had also seen men wearing the same oval shaped lenses in the gold wire frame. I didn’t want to put them on, partially in fear of getting caught by my parents, but I held them up to look into the distance through the lenses. Things looked quite small and far away. I really wanted to put them on and look through them, but I put them back in the case and took the case inside the restaurant. We had a box under the counter where the cash register was that held all the lost and found stuff. There were keys and other items and there were other pairs of glasses in the box, but all I could remember of the other pairs was that when I looked through the lenses of them everything looked magnified and blurry. I was very curious as to what I would be able to see if I were to put the newest pair on. Mom or dad usually worked the cash register. For some strange reason I had not told either of them about finding a pair of glasses in the parking lot and they possibly did not notice as they did not ask me about the new addition to the lost and found box. A few days after I found another pair of the same type of magnifying glasses that made up most of the glasses in the box. I don’t know why I did it, but I took out the pair of glasses in the case and replaced them with the most recent lost pair just in case my parents actually had noticed the new case with glasses. I put the glasses from the case in my pocket and that afternoon I asked it I could go back in the woods behind the restaurant. My important job was not so important that I could not take off for a while, and mom simply told me to be careful not to fall in the river. I then headed for the forest and as soon as I was out of sight of the restaurant, I went behind a tree and took the glasses out of my pocket. As I held them up in front of my face, I could see everything was really tiny, but clear. When I brought them to the point where I actually had them on the bridge of my nose and at a normal distance from my eye’s things became blurred and I could not see clearly. If I pulled them down to the end of my nose I could, with a little bit of effort, focus on things off in the distance clearly. This fascinated me, but I was disappointed that I could not wear the glasses. I was going to take them back to the restaurant with me and put them back in the case, but I decided I would hide them in a hole in one of the nearby trees. I did that and headed back to the restaurant. The next day I went back to play in the woods again. I had the urge to try the glasses on again, but this time I left them in the proper position for a little longer and I discovered that the harder I tried to focus through the lenses the clearer everything became. Maybe I just had to get used to wearing them. By the time I had worn the glasses for at least an hour every day I was able to put them on and it seemed that my eyes would come into focus much faster and easier. Now I could walk through the woods wearing them and it seemed as if my vision was pretty good with them on. By the time summer had ended and I was about to start my first year in school I could wear the glasses for 2 or 3 hours, and when I was wearing them, I hated to take them off and go back to the restaurant. I had even started taking them home with me and I would often wear them at home in the evening after mom and dad had sent me to bed. I was now reading my own books, and some nights I would hide under the covers with a light and read with the glasses on. I can’t remember when I started to notice that things looked better when I wore the glasses. Everything looked crisp and clear through the lenses. But now without them I could not see things clearly unless I got much closer to them. I do not remember this scaring me at all. I liked wearing glasses, and I hoped I could someday get a pair of my own. The next summer, the year I turned 7, was almost a repeat of the previous summer. My parents had become accustomed to me taking off to go back into the forest almost everyday and the minute I was out of sight of the restaurant I would pull the glasses out of my pocket and wear them the rest of the afternoon. Most of the time I would be gone for around 3 hours and would come back around 5, so that I could be the sweeper for the supper hour. I still received my $1.00 a day, although I wasn’t around nearly as many hours as I had been before I started going back into the woods. But now I wasn’t doing quite as good a job. I wasn’t able to see the crumbs and stuff on the floor and I was actually sweeping blindly. My mom noticed and she told me I had to do a better job. That was when I told her I couldn’t see the crumbs. That was when I was taken to see the eye doctor. My eye exam was exciting to me. I could read the letter on the very top of the chart, as well as the ones on the second row. But the third row down was mostly a guess even though I got the letters correct. But then the doctor pulled this big machine over in front of my face and had me put my chin on a pad. He did something magically and now all the letters got a lot clearer. I had read the second row as 2 P’s, but now I could tell that it was an F and a P. I read the third row and then the 4th before the 5th row was too blurry tor me to read all the letters. The machine clicked a few times and when I tried again now I could down to row 7, but row 8 was pretty much a guess work. The machine clicked a few times, and then there was a few more clicks when he asked me if this was better or if that was better. Then he put a pair of funny glasses on my face, and I could see much better now. I was still wearing the funny glasses when the doctor took me out to talk to my mom. I only remember snippets of the conversation and the words that stick in my mind are very nearsighted for his age, strong glasses, will have to wear his glasses full time. I do remember him explaining to mom that without glasses I could only see at 20 feet what people could normally see at 100 feet, and that he did not give me as strong a prescription as I needed to see perfectly because he would rather have me wear the glasses for 6 months and then test my eyes again before he gave me glasses that were the full strength that I needed. I chose a pair of glasses that looked very similar to the style that many other people were wearing, and they were called a Wayfarer style. I chose a mottled brown frame and when mom ordered my glasses, I had to give what the optician called the trial frame back. Without those lenses in front of my face it took a long time for my eyes to get used to seeing what I thought was normal again. It took 3 days before my own glasses came in, and I couldn’t wear my oval gold rimmed glasses except when I was reading in bed at night. When I put my own new glasses on, I could see quite well wearing them, and I could tell that they tugged at my eyes a little bit. I was a little surprised because the front face of my own glasses appeared to be quite flat, but the oval wire rims were curved a bit. I wore my own new glasses all of the time, although when I headed back to the woods I would change back to the oval ones. I liked them better than ever now, because my eyes felt like they were more comfortable, and I really could see everything a bit clearer when I had them on. I still wore them at night when I was reading in bed – not because they helped me read better, but just because I liked the way they made my eyes feel. By the time I had to go for my next eye exam I hoped I would get stronger glasses that were closer to the oval glasses in power. I did need a stronger prescription and I found out that my old lenses were -5D but my new ones were -7D. They felt like they were very close in power to the oval wire rim glasses and now I could barely tell the difference. There was no need for me to keep the oval wire rim glasses anymore, so I put them back in the case I had found them in, and they once again sat in the lost and found box. But what was surprising was that now there was a new case in the box with a pair of glasses in it. These glasses were very similar in style and color to my own glasses. Mom had not wanted to pay for a new pair of glasses for me, and only had them put new lenses in my frames, but I guess that was because it was cheaper. I know the optician tried to talk her into a complete new pair of glasses because she told mom that I could have a problem if I broke my glasses and didn’t have a spare pair now. My new lenses looked stronger in my frames than my old lenses had, but the fronts of the lenses had the same flat surface. The other pair of similar glasses had the same flat surface, and they really didn’t look any thicker, but when I put them on, I could tell that they were stronger. If I took them back to the woods and wore them for about a half an hour, I found I could see quite well wearing them. I suppose it took me about 3 or 4 weeks before I got enough courage to switch my own glasses for the pair in the case under the cash register. I was terrified that people would notice. I was also quite worried that whoever lost the glasses I was now wearing would come back for their glasses. However, as time went on and the case with my glasses stayed in the box I was not nearly as worried. I did wonder why the person who needed the glasses I wore now did not come back for his glasses. I had tried my old -7D glasses on a few times, and I could not see very well with them anymore. I could see perfectly with the stronger glasses, but without any glasses I was lost. I couldn’t see to function without glasses anymore and the few times I switched back to my own glasses I knew that they were no longer strong enough for me. By now I had realized that wearing these stronger glasses would soon make my eyesight become dependent on them, but I didn’t care. I loved the feeling that I got when I wore the stronger glasses. My sister was 6 now and she was still going to our grams after school and on weekends. I had become a lot more useful to mom and dad at the restaurant because I could now rinse and stack the dishes in the dishwasher, although I wasn’t allowed to latch it closed or run the cycle. I was able to unlatch it, open the lid and stack the dishes back on the shelves. I still swept the floor under and around the tables and since I now had 3 years of experience, I was doing a much better job. My wages went up to $10.00 a day, and while that was still pretty cheap labor for what I was doing I had no expenses, so I was managing to put money in my bank account. My sister told me that once in a while that gran was getting really forgetful and sometimes, she left the stove switched on after cooking stuff. What really surprised me though was when my sister told me she really liked my glasses, and she expressed a wish to wear glasses herself. The old oval glasses that I had worn for the first year before I got my own glasses were still in their case under the cash register and I told my sister that if she really wanted to wear glasses, she should take the oval glasses out of their case and wear them as much and as often as she could. I know that she did that, because the glasses were gone from the case a few days later. Almost a year later Karolin told my parents that she thought she needed glasses like me. Our parents didn’t like the thought that both of their children needed glasses, but mom went ahead and made appointments with the same eye doctor I had gone to. I had to switch the glasses I was wearing for the glasses that were in the case under the cash register so that the doctor couldn’t tell that I had been wearing stronger glasses than I had been prescribed, and I knew immediately that I would need a new pair of stronger glasses. It was not pleasant going around with everything all blurry, but it was certainly better to be wearing my old glasses than it would have been trying to go around without any glasses. My sister was prescribed glasses. Her glasses were going to have a prescription of -4.50D, and I wondered why my first glasses had been a little stronger with a prescription of -5.00D. But I had taken just under 2 years for my eyes to reach a prescription of -5D and maybe when I had my eyes tested for the first time I had managed to focus through slightly stronger lenses, because I remember that my first glasses had still tugged on my eyes slightly. I chose the exact same frame I was wearing. My mom again tried to suggest that I could have new lenses put in my old frame, but the optician told her that the price of a new frame and lenses was the same price as just buying the lenses because they were having a sale. And because my prescription was now -9.00D for both eyes, I really needed to keep my old glasses as a spare pair. My sister chose exactly the same wayfarer style frame as I had gotten except her frame was a sort of clear pink color. But it sure looked like our lenses would be interchangeable because the only difference was the color. I knew my sister had been wearing the oval glasses a lot of the time when she was at our gran’s house . And when I asked her, she told me that she had even been wearing them to school for most of the school year. She would have tried to go a little longer, but then our gran had to leave her house and move to a senior’s residence because she was forgetting a lot of things and it was no longer safe for her to live on her own. Karolin told me that gran hadn’t even really noticed that she wore glasses – at least she had never said anything about it, nor had she mentioned it to our parents. We both got our new glasses, and I could tell that my own prescription was just a little stronger than the other glasses I had been wearing. Now there was no way I would be able to increase my prescription so that I could get stronger glasses. I really liked the feeling of being over corrected and I was not at all disappointed that I needed fairly strong glasses. Now the original 2 pairs of glasses were back in the lost and found box. They were of no use to me anymore. But Karolin had been wearing my old -7D glasses around the house a lot of the time, and she wanted me to try to switch the lenses from my frame to hers as she figured our parents would notice. I searched on the internet to see how I could do that, and it was suggested that the old lenses should pop out, but that if they did not go into the other frame easily then I could run the frame under the hottest water I could get out of the tap and then try to put the lens in. The left lens went in easily without the hot water, but the right lens was giving me a little trouble, so I ran the hot water over the lens opening edges and when I tried the right lens went into place. Karolin was happy and then she was able to wear my old -7D lenses all the time. The following summer I was 11 and Karolin was 8. She was working in the kitchen at the restaurant, and I was still sweeping floors and doing dishes. Now I could load and latch the dishwasher, so no one needed to supervise me. And not only did I sweep the floors I often had to clean up after a spill and mop the floor. One day when I was sweeping a boy and a girl came in and sat in a booth. The male looked to be university age and he wore the most beautiful thick glasses I had ever seen. They were obviously a lot stronger than mine, and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked strangely familiar and as I looked at the girl, I was sure I remembered her as being a fairly regular customer. He took off his glasses and took out a cleaning cloth and then I realized he looked a bit familiar as well. I commented on the fact that they were here without their parents, and they replied that they were going to open up the cottage. Their parents were going to be coming up the following day. We got talking a bit more, and I mentioned that I liked his glasses. He looked at mine and commented that I had a pretty strong prescription for my age and that possibly I would need glasses as strong as his were when I went on to university. My sister came out of the kitchen and as she walked by, I called her over and introduced her to Eric and Marcy. Marcy said that we were just like them, as we all needed strong glasses. Marcy said her eyes were now a little worse than Eric’s were, but that she had worn glasses ever since she was 8 and so had Eric. As we were talking Marcy said she had lost her glasses one time when she had switched from her regular clear glasses to her sunglasses. She thought that she had left them here in our restaurant, but when she came back in to look for them, she couldn’t find the case anywhere. That is when I realized that it might have been her glasses in the lost and found box because she said she noticed them missing just a short distance away and her dad had driven back so she could look for them. I was almost willing to bet that her dad had parked in a different spot, and they had not noticed the case on the ground at the original parking spot, so I went to the lost and found box and brought the case back. Marcy recognized the glasses as being her old ones. Eric thought that was funny, as he thought he also had lost a pair of glasses here. But the glasses he lost were a lot weaker prescription than he needed, and he had only been wearing them while he was reading. He had just ordered a new stronger pair and the glasses he was then wearing were going to be his new reading glasses. He didn’t even bother coming back to look for his old weak glasses. I again went to the box under the register and pulled out the pair I had been wearing to show them to Eric. He was surprised that they were his old glasses. Both Eric and Marcy laughed about the fact that we had kept their old glasses for so long and had not turned them into the donation box somewhere. Karolin and I said nothing about the fact that we must have both had an obsession for glasses and had each worn their old glasses until our eyes had gotten bad enough that we really needed glasses. We didn’t think that they would understand that our wearing their old glasses was likely why we also both needed such strong glasses. We also didn’t think it was a good idea to thank them for both losing their glasses at our parent’s restaurant. But after Eric and Marcy left, both Karolin and I discussed how fortunate we had been to find a very nearsighted brother and sister that had both lost their old glasses at our parents restaurant. Specs4ever May 2020