Reminiscing Childhood Optician Visits

When I was a child, I hated visiting the opticians as much as the dentists. The whole idea of being physically examined, and then corrected, filled my adolescent body with an anxiety that went beyond the fear of school tests and exams. No amount of studying can yield a good result for eye and teeth examinations; except with regular maintenance and care, I could never expect a good outcome for something that seemed outside of my control.

I started wearing glasses at about age thirteen - quite a late age to start for most children - and by that age, I had already become fully aware of my outward appearance to others, so that in vanity, I was quite self-conscious whenever I needed to use my spectacles; therefore, in an effort to avoid the playground taunts of 'four eyes', or as I imagined other kids to judge me, I only wore my glasses when I deemed it necessary.

My mother knew that I didn't wear my glasses all the time, and to my betrayal, reported this to the optician during my eye examination. The optician who was in her late-twenties, starting out this new business venture with her husband, scolded me - "If you don't wear your glasses all the time, your eyesight will get worse!" Those words, that I never felt the need to question, stayed imprinted on my mind for many years after.

The truth is, that even though I did what the optician said, by obediently wearing my glasses - all the time, my eyesight still continued to deteriorate! So, now I realize that I have been lied to, I wonder if my eyesight would have been better if I hadn't started wearing glasses at all. For certain, I did have better vision as a child, but I can only speculate that wearing glasses for all these years have weakened and strained my eye muscles, so that they have 'forgotten' how to focus correctly.