I am one of the fortunate ones of this generation. My grandparents left me a trust fund that paid out a fixed amount yearly that I was able to use for my education, and after I graduated I found that I still had enough money saved up that, if I was careful, might allow me to spend the summer trekking around Europe. This is how I was able to afford to be in Venice and although my accommodations were not luxurious, I had a clean bed in a tiny room with its own washbasin. As I said, I was being careful with my money. All across Europe there were these places that were set up for travelers on a low budget. The rooms contained a single bed, and a washbasin and that’s about all. Oh, and there was often a chair to set your backpack on. Each room looked to be about 6’x 8’ and had a small window that allowed some natural light in. To use the shower or a toilet you had to walk down the hall and since there were about 8 rooms on each of the three floors you had to wait for the bathroom to be unoccupied before you were able to use it. I had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Science and I had taken a degree in Mathematics as a secondary. And I didn’t have a clue what use I was going to put this degree to once I returned to the USA. I had considered going into the medical field and for the last couple of summers I had been working at a one hour optical store in my hometown. The thought of becoming an optometrist, or maybe an ophthalmologist fascinated me; however I wasn’t thrilled about having to take 4 more years of schooling, even though my trust fund would have paid for it. I knew enough about grinding and polishing the lenses to specific prescriptions from the raw blanks and then fitting the finished lenses into frames that I could probably get a job at one of the larger lens laboratories and my thoughts were sort of leaning that way. I had found that I was enthralled by the way strong lenses looked in the frames, and I was always interested in seeing how a customer looked when they were wearing a pair of glasses that had a substantial prescription. I had spotted a rather attractive dark haired young lady at the check in desk that had finished checking in just before I did. I liked the way she looked, and she had given me a nice smile as I looked at her when she turned away to walk to the stairs. I had been by myself for a week now, and I really could use some company – even if it was just to have someone to talk to while we had dinner. I went into my room, and flopped on the bed, still thinking about that dark haired beauty. I heard the shower running down the hall, and I needed a shower so I grabbed the towel from the wall rack, got some clean clothes from my back pack and walked down the hall to wait for the washroom to be free. A minute or two later the door to the bathroom opened and my dark haired beauty stepped through the doorway. She had on one of those towel dresses but the shapeliness of it couldn’t hide her breasts which were protruding rather nicely. And as I looked at her face I fell instantly in love. She was wearing glasses with lenses that had to be at least -20D or better. They were set into a clear plastic frame with wide temples that were designed to obscure the side view of the thick lenses. “Hey, when I get myself cleaned up would you care to join me for supper?” I asked. “Oh, I couldn’t. I have taken my contacts out for the evening and I can’t go out wearing my glasses.” She replied. “Why would that matter? You look very attractive wearing your glasses.” I stated. “I never go out wearing my glasses. I hate them!” She stated emphatically. “You have to eat. I have to eat. I am tired of being my own company and I would love to have your company for dinner. Say yes, and we will go our own way after dinner.” I said. “Well, I guess I would like some company myself. If you really don’t mind me wearing my glasses I will go with you this one time. My name is Stefanie and I am having room 14.” Stef said. “Hi Stef, pleased to meet you. I am Randy and I am in room 12. I should be ready in about 15 minutes if that isn’t too soon for you.” I answered. “I will have my hair dried by then, but it will take me a few minutes to put my makeup on. I can’t see very well to do that without my glasses.” Stef said. “You look pretty darned good without makeup. You can forget the makeup if you want.” I responded. “You are a strange man Randy. You say that you like how I look wearing my glasses and having no makeup. But I will be ready in 15 minutes then.” Stef said. Stef was true to her word and was ready when I knocked on her door in 15 minutes. When she came out into the hall she blew me away. She was absolutely gorgeous, wearing a lightweight red dress and a shawl over her shoulders. She had a pair of high heels on and was likely right around 5’9 without heels so she was just the right height for my 6’2 frame. And as I looked at her wonderfully strong glasses, framed by her dark brown tresses I felt I had just won the jackpot. The thick lenses reflected the light, even though they had an expensive anti reflection coating. And the thickness of the lenses and the power rings when viewed at a bit of a side angle was perfect for me. I revised my -20D estimate upwards a little – maybe -23D or -24D. I told Stef that she looked fantastic, and she blushed and gave me a smile of thanks. At least she didn’t tell me that she knew I was lying because she looked awful wearing her glasses. She was one of those girls that had been brainwashed for years into believing that no guy would look at her twice wearing glasses. We had a really great dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant. Where else but Italy could you get Ravioli that tasted as fabulous as the food we had that evening. As the night went on we were well into our second bottle of wine, and the waiter had lit the candles on the table. The candlelight flashing off the lenses of her fantastic glasses was giving me ideas that I really didn’t think I should be having. We had talked a little bit about ourselves and I found out that the accent and the few misplaced words that she used when she was speaking English was because she was Jewish and lived in Israel, where English was a second language for her. I told her about growing up in the American Midwest and we both discussed our families. I tried not to ask her any questions about her eyesight, because I knew that most girls didn’t want to talk about it, but she volunteered the information that she had very bad eyesight that she had inherited from her mother. I did ask her if she knew what her prescription was, and she told me that she didn’t remember all the numbers, but the first number for each eye was -24D. Finally I asked Stef where she was going to be going to the next day, and when she told me that she was going to Rome I suggested that we could travel together. We did travel together to Rome and in Rome we shared a room. That was the start of a wonderful relationship, and Stef and I were inseparable for the next 3 months as we toured Greece, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland. By the end of our first week together Stef had come to the realization that I was serious about the fact that I didn’t mind it at all if she wore her glasses instead of her contacts, and for the rest of our travels she wore her glasses most of the time, resorting to contacts only for those days that we were touring places where she needed a bit better distance vision than her glasses could give her. With such a strong prescription Stef sometimes missed details off in the distance and I had to either bring her closer so she could see it properly, or in some cases we bought a postcard for the finer details. Her eyesight with glasses was really quite good, just not perfect. Stef was a real tiger in bed, and her sexual appetite was much greater than mine. At the beginning we were very careful to use protection so that an unplanned pregnancy didn’t happen, but we soon determined that if we really wanted to be safe she had better go on birth control pills and we found a friendly doctor in Germany who believed our story about stolen luggage and the loss of her pills. Sometimes Stef would wear her glasses when we made love, and other times she wanted them off. I didn’t care either way. Stef told me a bit about her myopia, and it seemed that she had inherited it from her maternal grandfather, who had passed it to her mom and her aunt, and then on to her. But Stef had a much stronger prescription than either her mom or her aunt and she was actually worried that if she had a child there was a possibility that her child might be almost blind. As the time for me to return to the USA drew near I asked Stef to marry me and return to the States with me. But she didn’t want to leave Israel. This created an impasse, and when we both determined that neither of us were willing to live in the other’s country of birth we parted company as friends. I was very depressed on my flight home. I had just had three months of bliss with Stef, and I knew it was highly unlikely that I would ever find myself such a wonderful, highly nearsighted, girl to be my wife. Heck, it was only by pure chance that I had found Stef, as I doubt that I would have asked her out to dinner back in Venice if she hadn’t come out of the bathroom wearing her glasses. Back home I had a quandary to overcome. I really didn’t want to go back to University to become a doctor, but I knew I wanted to be involved in the optical field. I applied for, and obtained a position at the lens making facility that supplied the one hour optical that I had worked at for a couple of summers with the stronger prescriptions that we could not grind ourselves. The gentleman who owned the business, and who eventually hired me expressed surprise that a man with high scores in both Science and Mathematics would be willing to take a position that could easily have been filled by someone with a lot less education, but I explained to him that I loved the optical business and was taking some time off from my schooling so that I could decide on the path I eventually wanted to take. I had a great time working at Prime Optical Lenses. The starting pay was nothing to write home about, but I fortunately had no student debt to pay off and I was able to not only survive, but I actually managed to save a bit without digging into my trust funds. I got involved in the crafting of most of the high minus and plus lenses that we made, because our optical design program sometimes required a little bit of tweaking to come up with an exact prescription in a very strong lens. I suppose the programs were set in such a way that most of the strong lenses came out within tolerances, but I managed to correct the programs so that a -25D lens was exactly that, not -24.75 or -25.25, both of which fell within the parameters required to give the lens a pass. And our customers soon noticed that they were not getting any complaints that “This prescription in my new glasses just doesn’t feel quite right.” That was why our business gained a few more satisfied opticians and, although there is not a lot of demand for lenses that are over + or – 20D, we were gradually cornering the market. The owner decided I was an asset that he wished to keep around, so he and I discussed my future and in the end we decided that I would purchase 25% ownership in the business and I would earn, and be able to buy more shares every year until Paul decided he wanted to retire, Then I would buy the rest of the business from him at an established share price. I had been noticing an ad in a couple of the trade magazines looking for volunteers to join a group going to South America in August to help people in remote villages obtain vision care. I hadn’t known this, but apparently there were a large number of people in the South American countries that have hereditary high myopia. It looked very interesting to me, so I asked Paul if I could have the month of August off, and I arranged to join the group of doctors and nurses on their journey. When I was speaking with one of the eye doctors that was going to operate and insert new lenses in the eyes of those people who had cataracts he happened to mention that he was surprised by the number of undiagnosed high myopes that he had found on his last trip. I questioned him as to how high the prescriptions he had found were, and he told me that he had found some people that ranged anywhere from -15 up to -25D and he could hardly believe that they were able to function as well as they had been without any correction. That got me thinking. With Paul’s permission, I took some obsolete regular plastic lens blanks that were no longer being used because they had been replaced by the new high index lens blanks and I started grinding lenses that were anywhere from -15D to -28D out of them. I could do a -15D lens without it being a myodisc if I used a small enough frame, and fortunately Paul had also authorized me to cull out a number of frames that were no longer popular due to the new, larger eye size style of frames that people had embraced. I sorted through all of the old frames and I selected a number of smaller eye sized frames that took the same edger pattern for fitting the lens. Eventually I had at least 2 pairs of glasses in each prescription that went from -14D up to -28D in one diopter increments. And the nice thing about it was that if I had a customer that required a -17 in one eye and a -15 in the other, all I had to do was to take a lens from each pair of glasses and I could end up with one pair that was fairly correct for the client. Of course that left me with 2 unusable pairs of glasses unless I happened to need the remaining lenses for someone else, but I didn’t think that highly likely. The glasses that were fitted with the higher powers were pretty ugly to an outside observer. The -28D lenses were double myodiscs, and were about ¾ of an inch thick. The front bowl was done with a -12D and the rear bowl was a -16D. To fit all that power into the bowls the inner bowl had to be no more than 20mm, and the outer bowl was 23mm. I thought they looked great, but then I wasn’t the person who would have to wear them. When August rolled around I packed up all of my pre made glasses and joined the group for the flight to Brazil. The group had gone to Venezuela a number of times, but there was so much turmoil there that for this year we were not going to take any chances on going there. The first week was fairly uneventful. We visited a number of remote villages, and the doctors did 6 complete cataract removals and lens replacements that week. I thought that was pretty decent for the primitive conditions we were working in. I had fabricated another 50 pairs of glasses in much lower prescriptions for people who the eye doctors had determined needed them, and while they were quite basic prescriptions it was still very satisfying to put a pair of glasses on someone who could no longer see to read and have them break out in a big smile when they were able to see up close again. And the same satisfaction was there for me when I fitted a young child with a pair of minus glasses and they looked around, seeing things in the distance for the first time. They also had brought quite a number of old donated eyeglasses along that gave me quite a selection of plus and minus low powered prescriptions to fit people with, and I was kept quite busy. The second week was pretty much a repeat of the first. I did manage to make use of one of my pairs of high minus glasses when the doctors discovered that a young mother was attempting to function with -18D of uncorrected myopia. My -18D glasses were not quite perfect for her, as she had a little bit of astigmatism, but they sure worked a lot better than no glasses had. Her real prescription was something like -16.75 x -150 x 90 in one eye, so the -18 over corrected her sphere a little bit in order to compensate for her astigmatism. The third week was even better. That week I managed to get rid of 5 pairs of my glasses. The lowest prescription of the 5 was an older lady that had need for one of the -15D pairs, and the highest was that of a 15 year old girl who needed a pair that was -22D. I also had to take the remaining pair of my -18D glasses for one young lady and remove the left lens so I could replace it with a -20D lens, leaving me with another pair that had -20D right and -18D left. I doubted that I would be able to use this combination, but at least I had the lenses if I could make use of them and I knew that when I got back to the states I could make up the missing lenses to give me both complete pairs again. The final week found us in an even more remote area. The people there were very skittish and hesitant to come forward, but eventually we managed to examine and fit some of the younger children with glasses. There was a 6 year old girl that had a -9D prescription and her sister, who was 2 years older needed -7.50, but I had to fit her with glasses that were -8D because I didn’t have any -7.50D glasses. They went away as happy as could be, and while I didn’t understand any Portuguese, which is the basic language of Brazil, I knew they were thanking me. The following day the two girls were back. They came into the camp leading their mother, who was probably the prettiest lady I had seen since Stef left me. And from the way she was walking I could tell that this lady was either blind, or more likely was as shortsighted as Stef was. She had a blank expression on her face and she trusted her daughters to lead her and watch for obstacles. She waited for the eye doctor to examine her eyes, and I went back to fitting lenses into glasses, but I had a hard time concentrating on my work and I kept glancing at the bronze dark haired beauty with the huge chest and fantastic figure. I had gotten into my work after the lady went into the tent for her eye exam, and when I felt a tap on my back I looked around to see Dr. Sessions standing there. “Sorry to disturb you Randy, but I know you brought some glasses with pretty strong prescriptions along. You wouldn’t have a pair with -29D or a pair with -30D would you?” Jeff asked. “Strongest I brought was a couple of pairs with -28D Jeff. Do you want them?” I queried. “I doubt that the -28D pair will be quite strong enough, but this patient has never had a pair of glasses, so anything would be better than nothing.” Jeff replied. I dug out a pair of the -28D glasses and gave them to Jeff. He went off to try them on his patient and I continued working, About 15 minutes later Jeff came into the tent leading the copper skinned dark hair beauty who was now wearing a pair of glasses. “Were they strong enough Jeff?” I asked. “They give her about 20/70 acuity. I could have used an extra two or three diopters and I think I might have been able to get her to better than 20/40. I told her that you had made these glasses using your own money and she wanted to thank you in person.” Jeff said, and he left me with her. “I Maria. I wan tank you my own self for gift of glazzez.” Maria said. ‘My name is Randy Maria. I am happy that my gift will help you.” I replied. “You hep Sabrina and Fabriana too. Mucho tanks to you.” Maria said. “You are welcome. I am just happy that I could help.” I responded. “You come eat after finish work. I cook for you.” Maria said. We had a pretty good cook that travelled with us, but I could not refuse the invitation of this dark haired extremely nearsighted beauty. I agreed that I would come into the village and have dinner with them as soon as I was finished for the day. As it got darker and work was about to finish for the day Sabrina and Fabiana showed up to lead me to their house, When we got to the house I was surprised that it was far nicer than most of the other places around it and I could tell that whoever built it had spent quite a bit of money in the construction.. The place was as neat and tidy as it possibly could be. It looked like everything had its place, and everything was put back in place whenever it was used. I realized that Maria, with her poor uncorrected vision, must have put the protocol into effect because she certainly could not have found things if they were not put in their usual place. There was an older lady with grey hair sitting in an easy chair with her back to me, and she got up and turned around when she heard my footsteps. One look at her and I could tell where Maria and the girls got their high myopia from. She wore a long out of fashion 70’s style of metal framed glasses with oval myodisc lenses that were very thick and were done with a strong plus carrier. This lady was every bit as myopic as Maria was. Maria introduced me in her halting English to Elise, her mother. Much to my surprise Elise replied to me in English. Maria went back to the kitchen to prepare the rest of the meal, and I sat talking with Elise. She told me that she had been born in Germany just before the end of the Second World War. Her father was a high ranking Nazi officer and was able to escape to Brazil with a significant amount of capital, but because there were a number of people hunting for former SS officers after the war he built his home here and hid in the Brazilian jungle for the rest of his life. Elise spoke 3 languages, German, Portugese and English. She had been schooled at a private school in Sao Paulo, and had taught school there for a few years. She had married and had given birth to Maria, but her husband had been killed and Elise had returned to the village with Maria when she was very small to look after her aging parents. Elise told me that her mother and her grandmother, who she had never known had both been very nearsighted, and that it seemed that the curse of high myopia ran in the females of the family, The meal was excellent. I have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I won’t ask what it is I am eating and I certainly hope you won’t tell me. If it tastes good to me that is just fine, and that meal was very tasty. I told Maria that her food was great, and I thanked her very much. She and the girls only had a limited command of the English language, and my Portuguese was next to nonexistent, but with Elise translating when necessary we managed to enjoy each other’s company until it was time for me to leave and return to my tent. That night I laid on my cot thinking about Maria. She was, without any exaggeration, the most gorgeous lady I had ever met. Thursday, the following day, was going to be our last day in this location. Our flight out was on Saturday and it was going to take us most of Friday to get to the airport, where we had rooms booked at the hotel. I was thinking about returning with a stronger pair of glasses for Maria, and I asked Jeff if he could get me a little better idea of the actual prescription that Maria needed. He suggested that if I could get Maria to come back to the tent he would examine her eyes while she was wearing the -28D glasses and then he could fine tune the prescription she required using the -28D glasses as a starting point. I went off to fetch Maria, and it took me a while to convince her to return to the tent to allow Jeff to check her eyes again. I think she sort of misunderstood me because she kept saying “no no wan a keep glazzez” I took that to mean that she was afraid we were going to take her glasses from her. But she finally did allow me to escort her back to see Jeff. One of the aids spoke the language quite well, so I had her tell Maria that I was going to go back to the States and make her a new pair of glasses that was the correct prescription for her eyes that I would then bring back to her. Once she understood that Maria was all smiles again, especially after she realized that she was not going to have to give up her glasses. I had also convinced Elise to come along to see if Jeff could get a proper prescription for her, because she had not had her eyes examined since she had returned to the outskirts of civilization. After wearing the -28D glasses for a couple of days Maria had been able to relax her eyes a little, Jeff was able to determine that Maria required a prescription of OD -31.00 and OS -30.50 x -1.00 x 90 for her best corrected vision so that is what I was going to use to make her new glasses for her. When Jeff examined Elise he determined that her current prescription was fairly close to what she still required and I was also going to make a new pair of glasses for Elise that were OD -28.50 x -3.00 x 72 and OS -29.00 x -3.50 x 100. I told Maria that I was coming back to bring her new glasses to her, and that if she was willing I would like to marry her after we got to know each other better. Elise helped translate this for me, and when I was saying goodbye Elise asked me in private if I was serious. I told her that I was, and she told me that she had tried to teach Maria English when she was younger, but Maria had never seemed to be interested enough to learn any more than a few rudimentary words. She then told me that now Maria and the girls might be more inclined to let her teach them more English, and I told Elise that it would be wonderful if she could do that. There was no real rush for me to return with new glasses for Maria. I did go back to work for the next 3 months and then I asked for another week off, which Paul reluctantly gave me. I flew back to Brazil, and rented a 4 wheel drive pickup for my trip to the edge of the jungle. I managed to find my way back to Maria’s house and she was delighted to have her new glasses. Elise was also quite pleased to have a new pair of glasses to wear, and I was thrilled to find that Elise had been true to her word and had taught Maria and the girls enough English that we could converse a lot easier than we could before. I wanted to take my relationship with Maria to a higher level, but it was impossible to do that when I was staying at their house with her mom and her 2 daughters there. I had not counted on the fact that possibly Maria would feel the same way, and when the second night I was there she slipped into my bedroom and climbed into bed with me I was very happy. I don’t know what, if anything, she told her mom, but after that night we spent together she joined me in my room every night for the rest of the week I was there and by the time I was leaving I was very sad that I would have to leave my very nearsighted beauty behind. After I returned home I investigated the requirements for bringing a fiancée to the USA. There were 3 options, two of which required us getting married in Brazil. The third option was a K1 immigrant visa which would allow Maria to come to the USA on this visa with the girls, and then we would have to get married within 90 days and she could then adjust her status accordingly. I didn’t want to give up my shares in the company and look for job in Brazil. I was sure I would be able to get one in my field, but my financial arrangements with Paul had been proving to be quite remunerative for me and I knew I would never be able to find a job that would pay me as well anywhere else. I took another week off and flew back to see Maria again. With my help she applied for a passport for herself and the girls, as well as a renewed one for Elise. It was going to take a while before her passport came, so I flew back home and returned to work. I flew back to Brazil a couple more times before all the paperwork was in order. Once that was the case I then flew back down to bring Maria and the girl’s home with me. I had arranged all the details for a small wedding within 30 days and I had also purchased Elise a return trip ticket to allow her to come for the wedding. I explained to Elise that she would only be able to come for short visits until Maria and I had been married for at least 2 years, and that once Maria had her permanent residence status then we could sponsor her to come to live with us if she wanted to. But Elise seemed quite happy to just come to visit. The wedding was the easy part. The paper work and the visits to the INS seemed to take forever. But finally everything was in place and Maria had her green card as did the girls. They were both in school, and were doing quite well. Sabrina was now 11 and her new glasses were -10D, up from the -8D I had supplied her with 3 years earlier. Fabriana was 9, and she was wearing -13.50D glasses. I was a little surprised that neither of the girls had developed any astigmatism, because their mom had a little bit in one eye and their grandmother had quite a bit of astigmatism in her glasses. Maria was now pregnant, and from the ultrasound we had determined that this one was going to be a boy. My desire to travel after I completed university had lead me first to three months of bliss with Stef, and then into the jungles of Brazil when I have now found permanent bliss with Maria. Specs4ever Feb 2016.