My older sister and I grew up in a middle class suburb of a major city. I was mildly jealous of my sister when she went off to kindergarten, and fortunately I was able to follow her only a year later because of the time of the year that our birthdays fell. We both enjoyed going to school, and we made friends easily. With only a year’s difference in school grades, even though she was 18 months older than me, I was allowed to hang around with Janelle and some of her friends. Our parents wore glasses. Apparently mom had very bad eyes and her glasses were twice as strong as our dads were, but dad was pretty dependent on his glasses and, like mom, he never took them off. Janelle and I sometimes talked about our parent’s glasses and we figured that since they both wore glasses we would likely need to wear glasses as we got older. Lisa, one of the girls in Janelle’s class wore glasses. Her glasses looked a lot like our fathers because they didn’t have the same circles in them that our mother’s had. Lisa never wanted to take her glasses off because she told us she couldn’t see anything without them. But one day Lisa let Janelle try her newest pair of glasses on. Janelle told me later as we walked home from school together that she couldn’t figure out why people wore glasses because after a few minutes of wearing Janelle’s glasses she could see just like normal. Janelle had asked Lisa if she could bring her old glasses to school so that Janelle could wear them for a bit longer than just a few minutes and we were both surprised when Lisa did as she had been requested to do and she actually gave them to Janelle to keep. Janelle put Lisa’s glasses on that day and she wore them all day in class. When we walked home together that afternoon I talked Janelle into letting me wear Lisa’s glasses. I could see exactly what Janelle meant. I put them on, and things were a bit blurry for the first few minutes, but then the blur cleared and I could see perfectly. When Janelle took the glasses off and let me try them she told me that things were a little fuzzy for a bit, but after a few minutes her vision returned to normal and she could see as well as she could before. Janelle wanted to ask our parents why this was, but we were a little afraid that they would be angry with us for playing around with glasses that were made for someone else’s eyes. So we kept our little secret and whenever we had the chance whichever one of us was able to wear Lisa’s old glasses without getting caught did so. It was really cool to put the glasses on, experience a minute or two of slightly blurry vision, and then be able to see perfectly well. The glasses were a style that suited either a boy or a girl, so I didn’t look out of place wearing them, and they actually looked extremely nice on Janelle. Our father’s brother wore much thicker glasses than dad wore, and not too long after Janelle and I had gotten Lisa’s old glasses Uncle Bob, Aunt Helen and our cousin Jennifer came for a visit. We had never seen Jennifer wearing glasses before and were a bit surprised that her glasses seemed to be even thicker than the glasses we had gotten from Lisa. Jennifer had a pair of prescription sunglasses, and when the three of us went to the park Jennifer put her prescription sunnie’s on. Janelle then asked Jen if she could wear her clear glasses, and after telling Janelle that her glasses would be impossible for Janelle to wear Jen let her try them on. I had to run back to the house to get Lisa’s old glasses and when I got back Jen was really surprised that Janelle could see so well wearing her glasses. The three of us hung around the park for a couple of hours, and when we got within shouting distance of the house Janelle and I took off the glasses we were wearing and allowed our eyes to return to normal. By now Jen didn’t seem to be terribly surprised that our eyes could do this, and she explained that she could make her eyes do the same thing, but she really loved wearing glasses so her dad had let her in on a secret. As hard as we tried, we could not get Jen to tell us the secret and she kept insisting that we had to ask our own father. We were afraid to tell our parents about having a pair of Lisa’s old glasses, and after talking about it for a while we decided that we would tell our dad that we had each worn Jen’s clear glasses for a while, and we could see perfectly with them, but we could also see perfectly without them. We had to wait a couple of days before we had a chance to tell dad, but when we did he just let out a sigh, and said, “I was afraid that you both might have inherited that ability.” Of course Janelle and I were now curious as to what ability we had inherited, and we bugged dad to tell us more. Apparently, in his family, their genetic makeup allowed members to focus their eyes however they wanted to. Dad explained that the focus inside a person’s eye was done by the ciliary muscle pulling what dad called zonular fibers that controlled the focus of the lens. In his family everyone had the ability to focus their eyes to adapt to whatever power of lens that was put in front of the eye. Ophthalmologists and optometrists really didn’t know very much about this phenomenon, and therefore a person like my dad and his brother Bob could go to an eye doctor and could be prescribed very strong lenses for myopia quite easily. My grandmother, his mother, had this ability, but had chosen not to wear glasses. But my dad, and Uncle Bob had loved the idea of wearing glasses so they both had gotten glasses when they were back in grade school. Dad then told us about meeting our mother at his eye doctor’s back when they were both around 16. He realized that mom was special when the nurse was unable to get a reading from the auto refractor. Dad and his brother could not get a reading from the auto refractor either because their eyes sort of adapted to whatever lens the auto refractor put in front of their eyes. Mom ended up getting glasses that day, and they were also fairly strong ones. Because of their meeting that day mom and dad ended up dating, and eventually getting married. We asked dad why mom’s glasses were so much stronger than his were, and dad explained that mom really liked strong glasses, so she got the strongest glasses she could be prescribed. Then dad surprised us even more when he asked us if either one of us wanted to wear glasses. I supposed we surprised him right back when we both answered yes immediately. Dad went on to explain that his glasses were around -10D, and mom wore glasses that were almost twice as strong as his were. He told us that he could take off his glasses and within a couple of hours his vision would likely revert back to somewhere around -4D or -5D. Our eyes, and even Jennifer’s eyes would likely revert back to requiring little or no prescription for a few years. But our mom, after wearing -20D myodiscs for as many years as she had, would likely not revert back to much less than -10D or maybe -12D. Dad wanted us to know that if we decided to wear glasses that it was possible that we would really end up needing them, especially if we wore strong glasses like our mom or our Uncle Bob. He had no idea how long it would take, but he said that our eyes would probably become slightly nearsighted naturally just because they were always looking through strong minus lenses. He just wanted us to be sure that we knew that and as long as we understood that he told us that he and mom had discussed the possibility that we would want to wear glasses and they had no problem with that. It was then that we told dad that we had gotten a pair of glasses from Janelle’s friend Lisa and we had both been wearing them whenever we could. Dad then suggested that Janelle should start wearing them full time and then he would take her to have her eyes tested. He explained that it was much easier to go to an eye doctor when you were already wearing a pair of glasses and that way the eye doctor would have a starting point for a new prescription. He suggested though that she not make the doctor give her too many clicks before she told him she could see perfectly. I suppose I was a little upset that Janelle was going to be able to wear Lisa’s glasses all the time now, but dad mollified me when he told me it would just be for a couple of weeks and then it would be my turn. Dad was true to his word. Within 3 weeks Janelle was wearing her own glasses to school. She had accidentally let the doctor increase the power of the lenses in the phoropter a little more than she should have and had ended up with glasses that were -14D, a -4D increase over the lenses in Lisa’s old glasses. At least Janelle told dad and I that it was accidental, but a few weeks later when it was my turn at a different optometrist’s I found myself wanting to keep on telling the doctor better and better each time I heard the machine click. Fortunately my prescription only ended up around -12D. Janelle and I now both wear pretty strong glasses. Janelle’s glasses are even stronger that Lisa’s, who was quite surprised that both of us had our eyes become really nearsighted so fast. And I know Janelle keeps looking at our mom wearing her myodisc glasses and I can tell that Janelle is calculating in her mind how soon she will be able to get glasses with the same little circles as mom has. I know I will increase my prescription gradually as I grow older, but I am a little more like my dad and will be more inclined to stop at a lower prescription – at least I think I will. This genetic gift we have been given makes it really easy to be addicted to strong glasses. Specs4ever April 2018