The Thick Lensed Silver Glasses:

I first met Karen, the girl I was eventually going to marry when I was in grade 4 and she was a year behind me. Her family had just moved into the area, and she had 2 older sisters. At the time Joyce was 10 and was in grade 5 and Carol was in grade 7. I was rather intrigued when I first met Carol, because at age 12 she wore glasses and I had never seen another girl who wore glasses with lenses that appeared to be that thick before. Carol was in Junior High, and I only was able to see her when she walked her other 2 sisters to school in the morning. I had absolutely no interest in 8-year-old Karen at the time, but I did know who she was because of my interest in her sister Carol’s glasses. There were 4 or 5 other girls in grade 7 and 8 at the Junior High who wore glasses, but Carol’s glasses were by far the thickest of any of the girls. I really do not know why, but I was attracted to the glasses that Carol wore.   When Carol was in grade 8, and Joyce was in grade 6, the girls must have had their eyes checked again, because now Joyce wore glasses and Carol’s new glasses seemed to be even stronger than her old ones. Now I was hoping that their little sister would also end up wearing glasses, because even though I didn’t have any time for girls I did think that Karen was kind of cute – for a 9-year-old, and she would look even cuter if she wore glasses.   I don’t remember how I ended up at Karen’s house one day after school. I know that their house was on my way home, and I ended up going in with Karen. I met her mom that day, and I could easily see where Carol and Joyce had gotten their genetics for myopia from. Karen’s mom wore really thick glasses – far thicker than the ones that Carol wore. I was definitely intrigued by her glasses.   I also remember the day that Karen told me she was going to wear glasses. She didn’t say that she might need glasses, nor did she tell me that she wanted to wear glasses. She just made the simple statement that she was going to wear glasses. I asked her how she knew that for sure, and she then told me that she had been practicing. When I asked her what she meant by practicing she then told me that she had been wearing an old pair of Carol’s glasses as much and as often as she could, and after she had them on for a little while she could see really well with them on. I questioned her a bit more about how much time she was spending wearing glasses and I wanted her to bring them to school the next day to show them to me so she said she would. I agreed to meet her the next morning on our way to school and when we met, I saw that Karen was already wearing her sister’s old glasses. Karen let me try them on, but I had a hard time making my eyes focus through the lenses. I would have tried harder, but Karen wanted them back and she told me that she was going to wear them all that day while she was in school. Joyce and Carol were both in Junior High now, which was a few blocks away, so Karen was not afraid of her sister’s seeing her wearing Carol’s old glasses at our school.   I saw Karen at lunchtime that day, and she still had her sister’s glasses on. When school was dismissed, we walked home together, and Karen took off the glasses just before she got to her house. The following day she was wearing them again, and for the next few weeks she wore them in school every day. Now when she got close to her house, she told me that she couldn’t see very well when she took them off. I told her that she had ruined her eyesight and she simply told me that she wanted to wear glasses and anyway both her sisters and her mom wore glasses so it would be no big surprise when she had her eyes tested and the doctor found that she needed them as well.   A couple of months passed by and one day Karen showed up in the morning wearing a different pair of glasses. The lenses in these glasses looked to be thicker, and to me they looked a lot like the pair that her older sister Carol had been wearing when they first came to town. I asked Karen if they were the glasses that I thought they were, and Karen told me they were. I could not believe that she could see through such thick lenses, but she proved to me that she really could see everything I pointed out. Now in the afternoon when we got close to her house and she took off the glasses, I almost had to guide her the rest of the way home. I told her that she really needed to tell her parents that she needed glasses, but she didn’t want to have her eyes examined until after she had worn Carol’s glasses for a as long as she could get away with it.   A few more days went by, and one morning when we met, she was grinning from ear to ear. Apparently, the previous afternoon after school she had slipped into Carol’s room and put the most recent pair of glasses that she had been wearing back into the case that was in Carol’s dresser drawer. Then at supper she had told her parent’s and her sisters that she had been noticing that she couldn’t see very well anymore. First, she tried on Joyce’s glasses, but she announced that they didn’t help much. Then Carol went to get a pair of her old glasses, and Karen said that the pair that she had worn first were a bit better, but things far away were still quite blurry. When Carol let her try on the pair that she had worn for the past 2 weeks Karen announced that she could now see much better. Her mom had let her wear those glasses to school that day, and she was going to make an appointment for Karen to have her eyes tested as soon as the doctor could fit her in.   Apparently, the eye doctor in our town was booked solid and it was going to be 3 weeks before Karen could have her eyes tested. During the first 2 weeks before the day of her eye appointment she wore Carol’s old glasses every waking moment. Karen was sure that she would be able to convince the eye doctor that she needed glasses that were at least as strong as Carol’s old glasses. Karen had even gone into her parent’s room and had found some of her mom’s old glasses. One pair seemed to be the weakest pair in the bunch, and she brought them with her to school one day to show me. She wore them while she walked to school with me and she said they seemed really strong, but if she worked at it, she could make her eyes see through them. That afternoon when we met to walk home, I noticed that Karen still had the old pair of her mom’s glasses on, and when I asked, she told me proudly that she had worn them all day in school. I couldn’t believe that she had been able to wear such a strong pair of glasses for the entire day, but she assured me that she had. And what she told me then was that when she got close to home, she would wear Carol’s old glasses into the house, put her mom’s old glasses away and then at supper she was going to ask Carol if she could try her newest pair of glasses. Then she was going to say that Carol’s new glasses made everything much clearer, but she thought she needed still stronger glasses. Hopefully, she would be able to talk her mom into letting her try some of her old glasses and then she would choose the ones that she wore to school all that day.   Karen’s scheme worked because the following morning when we met to walk to school, she was wearing her mom’s old glasses again. I looked at her and I couldn’t believe that this almost 10-year-old girl was able to wear such thick glasses. She wore them for the rest of that week, and she even told me she was going to wear them into her eye doctor’s office for her appointment after school on Monday afternoon. At 11 years of age, I was not interested in girls, but I certainly was interested in this one particular girl who for some unknown reason wanted to, and was able to, wear very thick glasses.   On Monday Karen was again wearing her mom’s old glasses in the morning. She had left school early for her eye exam, so I walked home by myself. The next morning when we met. I could not contain my excitement and I asked her how everything had gone at her eye appointment. I was not surprised when Karen told me that she really needed her own glasses, but it did shock me a little when she told me that the doctor had told her that she had the strongest first prescription he had ever seen in a 10-year-old. Apparently, her mom’s old glasses had a prescription of -11D, and that is exactly what the eye doctor prescribed for Karen. Her own new glasses were going to take around 3 weeks to come in, because her prescription was so strong. And in the meantime, she was going to be wearing her mom’s old glasses. I suspected that since the doctor knew she was going to be wearing those -11D glasses until her new glasses came in, even if her prescription was possibly not quite that strong when he tested her eyes, he knew that after another three weeks of wearing them full time she would likely need that prescription.   I really liked the appearance of Karen’s own glasses when I saw her wearing them. Her sisters had both needed new glasses as well, and both Joyce and Carol had chosen the newest style of oval plastic frames. I had seen them both a few days earlier because their glasses had come in sooner, although Carol’s prescription was now around -9D and her glasses looked very thick. Karen had chosen a frame that seemed to me to be a little old fashioned, as they were a cat’s eye frame that had been very popular for the previous 15 years or so but were now at the point of almost being out of style. Karen’s frame was a brushed silver with a gold nosepiece and the lenses were held in place with a thin band around the bottom of the lens. Her lenses were a new type of plastic, and they were even thicker than the glass lenses that were in her mom’s old glasses. The lenses stuck out so far behind the frame that Karen could not even fold the earpieces fully closed. But Karen said that didn’t matter because she had to wear them all the time now anyway.   I was amazed that Karen had been able to go from not needing glasses to a point where she could not even see to read without glasses unless she brought her book right up to her face. It had only been about a year and a half since she had first started wearing Carol’s old glasses. Now Karen was the most nearsighted girl in our public school, and other people seemed to have heard about the young girl with the really poor eyesight. I even heard my own mom talking about Karen’s high myopia with one of her friends, a nurse who had heard about Karen from another friend, a nurse receptionist at the eye doctor’s office.   I was sure that now that Karen needed to wear such thick glasses, she would be happy, but she still talked about wanting glasses as thick as her moms were. Karen was in grade 6 now, and I was in grade 7 at the Junior High. We still met up in the mornings and I walked with her to her school, but we often did not meet up in the afternoon. I had been seen with Karen many times by my friends, and I got my fair share of teasing about liking the girl with the thick glasses. I still was not thinking about our friendship as a boy girl relationship. To me Karen was just a girl who wore strong glasses, and by now I had decided that I really liked girls who wore glasses. When Karen asked me if I would take her to her grade 6 graduation party/dance I realized that Karen must have considered me as boyfriend material. Because I was in love with her gorgeous thick lenses in her silver framed glasses, I decided that I could probably fall in love with the girl that wore them.   Karen had gotten her own glasses in May. The following March she told me that she could no longer see as clearly through them as she could when she first got them. Her doctor had wanted to see her in a year, and her appointment was almost 2 months away, shortly after her 11th birthday near the end of April. I asked her if she was going to try to get the appointment moved up, but she just told me that she had already been checking out her mom’s older glasses, and while the pair that her mom wore right after the other pair Karen had worn seemed pretty good, she felt that she liked a pair that was even stronger than that pair and even the following pair. And the pair she liked had a similar silver frame. The only thing she wasn’t sure of was that the pair she liked was dished in on the front, and she thought her mom might notice that. My suggestion was that she should tell her mom that she was no longer able to see the board at school and ask her if she could try on another pair of her old glasses.   My suggestion worked, because the next morning I could tell that the pair of silver framed glasses Karen was wearing were different. The frame was similar, but as Karen had said, the lenses had an inward curvature in the front of the lenses. The lenses seemed to be thinner than Karen’s own glasses, but she told me that they were just strong enough that she could see through them if she forced her eyes to focus just a bit. I got to the point where I really liked the appearance of Karen wearing these glasses and I hoped that when she got her own new glasses that they would be curved inward on both sides. From that day until Karen had her eye appointment on the 17th of May she wore these glasses.   Karen, Joyce, Carol and their mom all had eye appointments that day. The girls all needed stronger glasses. Joyce was now at -5D with some astigmatism, Carol had gone from -9D up to -11D, and Karen had tested at -14D, which was -0.50D stronger than the old glasses of her mom’s that she was wearing. Their mom had finally broken the -20D mark, although her new prescription was only -0.75D stronger, so I now knew that the glasses she had been wearing for as long as I had known the family had been -19.50D. This had been the first increase her mom had been prescribed with in many years, but it showed me that myopia never completely stopped climbing a little higher.   This time Karen had new lenses placed in her old frame. The other 3 got new frames and lenses and Carol had chosen a larger rectangular shaped brown plastic frame that made her lenses look really thick – much thicker than Karen’s old -11D lenses had looked in her silver frame. Their new glasses all came in around the same time, and the only difference I noticed in Karen’s mom was that the lenses in her glasses had what seemed to be a little circle in the center. Karen had told me that her mom now needed what was called a myodisc lens, and I hoped that Karen wouldn’t need that type of lens because I really liked her thick lenses. But I figured that if Karen’s eyes got worse, I would just have to get used to her wearing that type of lens. With her new lenses they seemed to be even thicker than her old ones. The earpieces still wouldn’t fold closed, and the front of the lens seemed to be dished in deeper than the front of her mom’s old glasses. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, and that summer we spent a lot of time together. I was a little surprised when we were at the library that even when wearing her glasses Karen had to bring her books very close to her face, but she told me that her strong lenses made the printing look a lot smaller, so she had to bring everything really close to her glasses and that way the printing was big enough to read. She showed me how her lenses made things so much smaller by letting me look through her glasses and moving them far enough from my eyes that everything looked really clear, but so tiny. I figured then that was why I could see things far away a lot better than Karen could.   The next 3 years saw Karen turning 14, and when I had graduated from junior high the previous year, I had taken Karen to my graduation dance. The year Karen graduated we went to her dance together. Her mom seemed to be fine with Karen and I dating, and all my mom said was that Karen seemed to be a very nice girl, but her eyesight could be a problem when she grew older. I didn’t care how bad her eyes got though, as I loved the fact that she was almost helpless without her glasses on now. I made sure I never commented negatively if she could not see something off in the distance and I had to help her out. I also made sure that I frequently complimented her on her appearance, and if she ever asked me if I minded that she was now almost blind without her glasses I told her that I never even though about it. I liked her appearance when she was wearing glasses and I often told her that.   When Karen was 16 and she had her annual eye exam her prescription had climbed a bit higher and was now -18D. The silver frames I loved so much had been replaced about 3 years ago, as they were now extremely dated even though they would have accepted yet another prescription change if she had wanted to continue wearing them. Now she was wearing a brown plastic frame with wide sides and a much narrower rectangular lens shape. The front of each lens was dished in quite deeply, and the rear edges of her lenses were so thick that they had to bevel off the outer edges. These glasses did give her the appearance of being almost blind, but she actually could see fairly well with them, and I told her I though she looked good wearing them. Her eye doctor had wanted Karen to try contact lenses, but I nixed that idea by telling her that I thought she looked like one in a million wearing her glasses, but with contact lenses she would just be another face in a crowd.   Since she had first gotten glasses Karen’s glasses always had more diopters than her age. By age 10 she was wearing -11D. At age 16 she needed -18D, and by the time she was 18 her prescription had climbed to -20D, just a little weaker than what her mom needed. Her eye doctor had told her that by the time she was in her early to mid-20’s her prescription increases would start to slow down, although she might continue having smaller increases until she was in her 40’s. Karen didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life once she had graduated from high school the previous year, and she was now working in a clothing store as a salesclerk. I had been apprenticing as an electrician for 2 years, and I was making a fairly decent hourly wage, with overtime when and if I wanted it. Karen and I had slept together one time, when we went out of town to a friend’s wedding. We both enjoyed the sex, and after we got back from the wedding, I asked Karen to marry me. She accepted, and we planned to have a small wedding as soon as we could find a place to live. Our parents wanted us to have a church wedding, but we told them we wanted a very simple, small wedding and they finally agreed that we should have what we wanted. We found a one-bedroom apartment that we could rent, and we bought the few pieces of furniture that we needed at a secondhand store.   Karen had been letting nature take its course with her eyesight ever since she had been prescribed the -14D lenses in her old silver glasses. When we were moving our possessions to the apartment, I came across the silver glasses while we were unpacking, and I asked Karen to try them on again. Of course, they were far too weak a prescription for her to wear, but she was now 19 and it was time for her to have her eyes checked again. I asked her if she would consider having new lenses put in the silver frame for her to wear for our wedding, as we were only going to go before a justice of the peace. At first, she told me no, but after a bit of back-and-forth conversation I finally got her to agree to allow me to have her new prescription put in the silver frames. They really had been out of date when she first got them 10 years ago, but by now they could almost be considered antique, as when they first came into style had been over 25 years ago.   Karen and her sisters all had their annual eye exam a few weeks before we were going to get married. Carol had not had her prescription change over the last year, and she was still at -18.50. Joyce, who had stated out having a much lower prescription than either of her sisters was now right around -20D and Karen had increased to -21.50D. Karen chose a new frame that was quite stylish, and she ordered the lenses as myodiscs. She had once told me that she never wanted to wear myodiscs because she liked the thickness of her lenses in regular biconcave plastic, but this time she had to get myodiscs because that was all they would do her new prescription in for the frame she chose.   I was with Karen for her eye exam, and I wanted to be sure that the lenses in her silver glasses were what I wanted her to have for my enjoyment. The optician was adamant that they could not do what I asked for and they would need to use the same myodiscs lenses that they were ordering for her other glasses. Eventually she did agree that it would be possible to order the new lenses with a -8D front curve and the remaining -13.50D in the back of the lens.  By doing it that way the lenses would be extremely thick but would not be a myodisc lens. After a lot of discussion, she agreed to order the lenses that I wanted, after informing me that they would be close to an inch thick and that I had to pay for both pairs of glasses before she would order them. And I had to sign a paper that said that there were no returns or refunds on prescription lenses.   When we went back to pick up both pairs of glasses, I really liked the way the silver frames looked on Karen. The lenses really were very close to an inch thick, and I think Karen was a little shocked at how thick they actually were. But she was happy with her new myodiscs, and she felt that she could see a lot better with her new glasses. On the way home she changed to the silver pair, and she told me that she thought she could actually see a little better with them, but that she had never realized before that with her strong prescription she could only see clearly through the very center of the lens so she would have been just as well off if she had gotten myodiscs back when she was 15 or 16 when they were first suggested for her by her optician.   Karen wore the silver glasses for our wedding and Carol and her boyfriend came with us to sign as witnesses. Both our parents threw a dinner party for us, and Karen went along with my request for her to wear the silver glasses for the whole day. There were lots of pictures taken, and as I had asked, Karen did not take her glasses off for even one picture. That night we went back to our new apartment to begin our married life and as we laid in our new bed together, I gently removed Karen’s silver framed glasses and turned off the light as we made love for the first time in our married life.   The next morning, I woke up first and I watched Karen as she laid there sleeping. She looked different without her glasses and as I felt her stir, I knew she would be wanting her glasses, so I reached over her and took her glasses from the night table to put them gently on her face as she opened her eyes. I told her that I would always love her and that I hoped that she would occasionally wear the silver glasses for me when we went out together. I still didn’t know what I loved more – Karen, or her silver framed glasses with the thick biconcave lenses.   Specs4ever March 2020          

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