Chapter 1
Given that she had strong suspicions that her husband, Geoff, was attracted to ladies wearing glasses, it was amazing that Jenny had made it to the age of 35 before booking herself in for a proper eye test. She had always prided herself on her perfect eyesight, she’d never had any problems with her vision and was convinced that this was a bit of a waste of time. However the truth was after 10 years of marriage the spark had somewhat gone out of their marriage and she thought that describing in detail an eye test might get Geoff’s juices flowing again. She’d got the idea after visiting her parents a few weekends previously. Her mum, who had worn glasses for close work for as long as Jenny could remember, was now wearing glasses all the time. Geoff, who was never that close to his mother-in-law, seemed to want to be around her quite a lot that weekend. He had (unusually) offered to help with the washing up so he could be in the kitchen with her and Jenny could overhear him asking questions about her new glasses and her reasons for getting them, complimenting on her choice of frames and generally showing a lot more interest than he had ever shown before. In fact, she found herself almost getting a little jealous of her own mum who seemed to have drawn the attention of her husband – how silly! Jenny had always suspected that Geoff was attracted to bespectacled ladies – when asked which celebrities he fancied he usually named glasses wearing newsreaders or weather girls, and when she had friends over he invariably like to spend time with those who wore glasses as well and, if they were wearing new frames, he would tell Jenny after they had left how much he liked them. Most times she hadn’t even noticed! So here she was, in the unfamiliar surroundings of the optician’s waiting area, wondering what the next steps would be. She didn’t have to wait long as the assistant called her over and led her into a side room with a couple of machines in. The first one involved looking into an eyepiece at a picture of some hot air balloons that seemed to come in and out of focus. For the next test she had to click a clicker every time a little dot lit up somewhere on the screen and then, the worst of the lot, they blew a puff of air into her eye – that was nasty! She was reflecting on this when she heard her name called and she looked up to see a young Asian lady with a clipboard, she introduced herself as Danita and said she would be carrying out her sight test. Jenny was led to a small room and sat down in the big comfortable chair, and after answering a few simple questions about her general health the big arm was swung in front of her face and she was asked to look through the holes towards the chart of the wall, one eye at a time. The big letters were a complete doddle and she would have been amazed to learn that there were people who could not read those without correction, however they obviously put the really tiny ones at the bottom just to fill the space on the chart as there surely was no way anybody could read stuff that tiny from so far away. The whole thing as a little confusing when she was asked by Danita “which is clearer, 1 or 2?” and she really wasn’t sure what the point of all that was because some of the time they were just putting lenses in that made things more blurry. After repeating the process for the other eye, She then pinned a reading card on a stick to the end of the big headset and Jenny had to read as far down the chart as she could, which was nearly all the way. Danita made a couple of clicks and the whole thing became really amazingly clear. The optician took a handheld microscope with a built in torch and looked really closely at her eyes, she said to check the general health of the eyes and then the big lights came on to indicate the end of the test. Jenny was just about to stand up thinking that was all over when Danita stopped and said “hang on Jenny, I need to discuss the results with you and give you your prescription”. Her heart skipped a beat, why on earth would she be given a prescription when her eyesight was perfect? Danita continued, “You’ll be pleased to know that your eyes are healthy, but you are a little long-sighted or what we might call hyperopic. You also have some astigmatism, particularly in your right eye. The good news is that it’s nothing to worry about and it is easily corrected using glasses.” Jenny was dumbfounded; she had no idea that she might actually need to wear glasses. “Glasses?” she exclaimed, “What do I need to wear glasses for? I thought my eyesight was fine!” “Well, your eyesight is pretty good, but there is some refractive error there which you have been compensating for by using your ciliary muscles for distance vision. This means the muscles have to work hard all the time and even harder when you are reading which can lead to eyestrain and headaches. If you wear your glasses for close work for now, that should make things a lot more comfortable for you”. Jenny admitted that she did sometimes get headaches when she did a lot of reading but had dismissed them as just being dehydrated or general tension. Danita gave Jenny her prescription and introduced her to Susie, a young optical assistant in the main part of the shop who she explained would take payment for the sight test and help her to choose some glasses. She needed time to process all of this and to discuss with Geoff, who she assumed would not only be pleased with the news but may also want to help her select some frames. She therefore made an excuse to Susie and said she’d return with her husband at the weekend to choose some frames. Susie said that would be fine, took payment and then gave her a card with a print out of her prescription on it: OD Sph +0.50 Cyl -0.75 Axis 090 OS Sph +0.25 Cyl -0.25 Axis 050 Add +0.50
The numbers and abbreviations were all gobbledegook to Jenny but she looked forward to showing them to Geoff, she suspected he might be quite pleased to receive the news.
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