I am convinced that my preference towards ladies who wear strong glasses came from my childhood. My mother came from a family of 8, and she was the oldest of her siblings. Her youngest sister, our Aunt Karen, was born when my mom was 15. Mom married my father when she was 18, and I was born a year later. I was only 4 years younger than my Aunt Karen. As a result I spent a lot of time during my childhood in the company of my Aunt Karen.
I don’t remember when Karen got her first pair of glasses. There must have been a lot of talk about it in my mother’s family, because no one else in the family wore glasses. I do know that it was likely around the time I was born, because I can’t remember a time that Karen didn’t wear glasses, and I know from conversations I overheard that Karen had worn glasses even before she had started school at age 6.
Karen spent a lot of time at our house, as we lived quite close to my grandparents. I know that mom was grateful for her help, and even though there was a 15 year age gap, I know that mom and Karen became quite close, probably closer than they were to any other of their siblings.
I couldn’t tell you when I first became conscious of the fact that Karen was different from other people. I do remember that as a child I was fascinated by her glasses. I would often stare at her eyes through her lenses and marvel at how small and tiny her eyes looked behind the lenses. And I remember my mom telling me that Karen had very bad eyes and couldn’t see a thing without her glasses.
I was probably around 7 when Karen started to baby sit for mom and dad whenever they went out. By this time I wasn’t any problem to look after, but my sister Katie was a bit of a handful, and Karen and I seemed to have to keep on top of Katie at all times. Katie was then 4, and wanted to get into everything. But once Katie went to bed Karen and I would often sit and watch the television together. Karen always seemed to have to sit pretty close to the screen to see things properly. And once in a while when mom took Karen and I to a movie Karen would want to sit in the lower row of seats so she could see the movie clearly.
As I got older I would sometimes hear mom and Karen talking about her eyesight. Karen needed stronger glasses quite frequently, and the biggest deterioration in her vision was during the period from age 13 through around age 17. By the time Karen was 17 the lenses in her glasses were no longer thick and sticking out in front of and behind the frame, but instead they had little circles in the middle that were right in front of the pupils of her eyes.
Karen never married, nor did she work full time. She lived at home with her parents, and because of her poor eyesight she never even drove a car. I remember I felt sorry for her because she was a really nice person, and I thought she was very pretty. Her glasses didn’t bother me at all, and I would have happily married her – if she hadn’t been my aunt.
When I was old enough to start dating I seemed to be drawn towards girls who wore glasses. There had been a few girls in my grade who had gotten glasses when they were in lower school, but now by the time we were in grade 12, most of these glasses wearers wore contact lenses. I had gone out with as many of the contact lens wearers as I possibly could, but I never found any of them that I felt I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.
Finally I started dating Sherry. Sherry was 2 years younger than I was and was in grade 10. She wore glasses, but her glasses spent as much time in their case as they spent on her face. I knew she couldn’t see very well without them, but I couldn’t talk her into wearing them unless she needed them to watch a movie. She must have been pretty good at discerning shapes, and was able to figure out who the people coming towards her were, because she could always pick me out if we passed in the hall at school.
Sherry’s parents didn’t have the money to send her off to university. And I hadn’t gone to university either, but had taken a drafting course after high school that allowed me to custom design new homes. I was now working for the local lumberyard in their construction division as a home designer. When there was an opening at the lumberyard for a cashier, I recommended Sherry, and she got the job.
Sherry found it necessary to wear her glasses full time while she was working. And now, even after work, I think she simply found it easier to leave them on. It was also possible that her prescription had increased a bit, although this was just a guess on my part. At this time whenever we went out on a date her glasses were already on her face when I picked her up. I tried my best to tell her that I liked her appearance when she was wearing glasses, but soon she began talking about getting contact lenses. And, once she had saved enough money she did get contacts.
Sherry was wearing contact lenses for our wedding. And after she got them she very seldom went downtown wearing her glasses. Most of the time she would change into her glasses a couple of hours before we went to bed so I would at least get to see her with her glasses on for a short time every day. And, when the kids were born Sherry did wear her glasses a lot more. Actually, her prescription increased a little with the birth of each child. After the kids were old enough to go to school Sherry went back to work and contact lenses again became part of her daily routine. When Sherry went back to wearing contacts she switched from the old hard lenses that she used to wear to a new type of soft lens that enabled her to keep her contacts in until bedtime, so now I very seldom ever saw her wearing glasses.
Marriage and children changed the dynamics of our marriage. We gradually drifted apart, and looking back on it I place a lot of the blame for this on the fact that she no longer ever wore her glasses. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, but to me there wasn’t a lot of joy in our marriage anymore. Two years later, when her mother passed away, Sherry inherited a bit of money from her mom’s estate. With this money Sherry decided she was going to have eye surgery so that she no longer even needed to wear contact lenses. The operation was successful, and I really didn’t notice any change in our life. Sherry had been wearing reading glasses over her contacts for the past few years, and now after her surgery she still had to wear reading glasses. Now there was no contact lens paraphernalia sitting on the bathroom countertop, and when I came to bed and found her reading in bed she was wearing readers, instead of her old glasses with their minus lenses..
With the complete loss of any chance of ever seeing Sherry wearing minus glasses the other problems in our marriage began to eat on me more and more. Finally I could take it no longer. I could not tell her the truth, but we did discuss the fact that we no longer had any warmth and love between us. So we decided to separate while we still could be friends. We did do that and it surprised me a bit when a year or so later Sherry was the one who wanted to divorce. I went along with this, and I became a single man again.
I had been having a hard time living as a divorced man in the town where we grew up. I knew everyone, and they were constantly trying to set me up with someone to date. So, I found a similar job in another area of the country and I moved.
One nice thing about getting older was that now I began seeing more and more ladies my age or slightly younger, wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. In some cases the ladies no longer felt that they had anything to prove, and they thought that if any man was interested in them they wanted the man to accept them the way they were. In other cases there were a few former contact lens wearers who had been told by their doctor that they no longer could wear contacts. As I dated, I found that generally the ladies who had been told they could no longer wear contacts were not as comfortable, nor as happy wearing glasses as the ones who had chosen to wear glasses on their own. And, the stronger their prescription was the more they disliked the fact that they had to wear glasses.
I met Gail at a buffet restaurant near where I was renting an apartment. She was helping her mother out of her car and into a wheelchair, and was having a struggle, so I went over and helped them. I walked into the restaurant behind them and I paid for my own meal. I wanted to choose a seat where I could observe Gail, because I liked the looks of her, and was enthralled by the strong glasses that she wore. As I searched for just the right seat, Gail’s mom waved me over and asked me if I wanted to join them. I realized later that Gail’s mom was trying to set her divorced daughter up with a pleasant helpful appearing male – that would be me, and she succeeded. Before she passed away, Gail and I had married.
I liked Gail. I really liked Gail, and it wasn’t just because of the -15D glasses she wore. She was a lot of fun to be with, had an excellent attitude towards everything. It certainly helped that she “wasn’t able to see past the end of her nose” without her “coke bottles” as she so aptly put it. We spent 8 good years together before I retired, and then we bought a motor home and spent another 5 years travelling. I considered myself fortunate that I had found her. Because Gail was the only one in her family who needed glasses for anything other than reading she was a lot like my Aunt Karen who had unfortunately passed away in her early 40’s from some type of cancer.
Because of her high myopia Gail had an annual eye exam and a complete retinal examination. After she returned home there was generally no discussion about how her eye exam went because this was a subject that was generally not discussed. That year she was as happy as could be, and the reason behind her happiness saddened me deeply. Her doctor had discovered the beginning signs of cataracts, and had told her that her health insurance would cover a clear lens extraction and lens replacement. With the new multi focal lenses available there was a very good chance that Gail would not even have to wear reading glasses. As she bubbled on and on about this I realized that within a year I would no longer have my very nearsighted wife to gaze lovingly through the lenses of her glasses at any more.
Gail did have the operation, and she no longer requires glasses unless she is doing very fine close up work, and she then uses a pair of store bought reading glasses. We are still together, and we will be for life. I mourn the loss of my personal high myope, but she is still the same great person. And I feel that there is no sense going for a third strike.