Glasses no longer hold the same stigma

Granddaughter Emma has her first pair of glasses. She loves them.
I remember my first pair. I hated them. They were blue. I had actually needed them the year before. When they gave the eye test at school, I memorized what the kids in front of me said. The following year I tried it again, but my best friend insisted on talking to me and I missed a couple of the letters.
The teacher sent a note home. I censored the offending words with a black crayon but it didn’t do any good.
My Aunt Kitty was working at an optometrist office at the time and they hauled me over there. The eye doctor, Dr. Silverman, gave me an eye test. He also handed me a pair of silver glasses with a series of tiny holes in them. Miracle of miracles, I could see.
Then he took them back.
A few weeks later I received my glasses. I put them on and it made no difference in my vision. None. I was told that my vision was so poor that I had to get used to wearing glasses before they would give me a pair that would correct my eyesight. I wanted them to give me the silver glasses, but they wouldn’t.
I wore the hated spectacles during school as required. I learned to listen to what the teacher was saying as there was no way in the world I could see what was written on the board. Finally, in sixth grade, I was again hauled to the eye doctor’s office. It was a different doctor. This time they gave me a pair of glasses that corrected my eyesight.
I didn’t want to take them off. I was amazed that I could actually see the leaves on the trees. Up until then, I thought everybody saw trees as a fuzzy green blob atop a big fuzzy brown trunk.
Thankfully, Emma won’t have to wait to be able to see. Her eyes aren’t that bad yet and I am glad that practices have changed in the years since my first awful visit to Aunt Kitty’s place of work.
Emma looks cute in her new glasses. The stigma once attached to them seems to have evaporated. It is not the big deal that it once was.
Emma comes by her vision problems honestly. Her mom, grandparents and great-grandparents all wear glasses or contacts. Even though Emma’s mom had surgery to correct her vision she still has to wear glasses to drive after dark.
So far, the little boys, Jacob and Nicholas, don’t show any signs of needing corrective lenses but only time will tell. There has been no word as to what the boys think of their sister’s new glasses. As long as Emma likes them and they help her to see that is what counts. I am eternally grateful that Dr. Silverman has long since retired, and that Emma doesn’t have to wait years after the problem has been identified for her sight to be corrected.
Emma has new glasses and she not only looks adorable, she can see.