Dear Diary I
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Dear Diary
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1. April
Kirsty dumped her school bag by the door of her small bedroom and sighed, sat on her bed, kicked off her shoes, then lay back on her bed staring up at the ceiling. It occurred to her that the little black mark on the ceiling, some fault in the cheap plasterboard from which it was made or else something she knew not what, seemed a slightly worse blur than the last time she had idly considered such a matter. She lifted her hand to her face and pulled down her glasses to look at it without their aid: predictably it vanished from her view completely. But in her estimation, restoring them to her eyes did only half a job at giving her a clear image.
In a way she was beginning to get used to this; for it wasn't the first time it had happened that she'd needed stronger glasses, it was just that she hadn't known it this bad, and so soon. Previously her vision had got this bad just before new glasses, but this time it was nine months before she was due to get them replaced, and she dreaded to think what things would be like by then. It was all very well having lenses of around minus 6.5 for each eye, but at this point she needed around minus 8.5. The resulting shortfall resulted in a blur that was at first barely noticeable, then something to casually remark in her diary about, then later she noted the way that she couldn’t see the bare branches on trees as well as she had during the previous spring, and now, for the last two months or so as she slowly lost the ability to read the blackboard from the sixth row back in class, the letters slowly melting, softening and distorting into uncertainty.
She sat up and looked at herself in the old and battered mirror attached to an older and even more mistreated wardrobe, sitting against the far wall only a short distance away from her eyes, but even at that short range her face was softened and indistinct, details like the buttons on her school blouse difficult to make out, the wispy tufts of her blonde hair visible only when pulled together. Behind her head, the patterned wallpaper seemed to her to be just a murky pale blue blur, its subtle pattern hidden from her: even turning her head around to look at it directly only helped so much. Not that wallpaper was worth looking at for very long, in her opinion. She shrugged, deciding that it was time to ask her mum for new glasses again: she'd asked a couple of months ago, and got nowhere. That answer had upset her, but then at the age of 13 she was old enough to know that the situation her family were in was not good: Kirsty had 4 younger sisters and only a poorly-paid working mother and some inadequate state benefits to buy glasses for the whole family, and that didn’t include all the other necessary expenses of life on top. And it wasn't as if she had the worst vision: her immediately younger twin sisters Amy and Melissa, some three years younger than herself, merited as much special attention as could be managed, because they each had more than thrice the myopia she had even now, and it was predicted that they would have considerable visual problems in future.
Despite this she trotted downstairs and into the kitchen, and found her mother, herself 42 years old and labouring with glasses too old and too weak for her slowly advancing myopic progression. She favoured Kirsty with a tired glance and then got on with preparing dinner. Kirsty asked
'Mum, I need new glasses....'
Her mother gave a quiet sigh, and replied
'I'm sorry, darling, you'll have to wait your turn.'
Kirsty raised her voice, and said unhappily
'Mum, I can't see very well.... I can't see the blackboard at school. I need new glasses, and quick.'
Her mother put down what she was doing and replied firmly
'Kirsty, you'll have to make do with what you have. I need new glasses too, you know. I'll have to let you girls go first, too. But now is not your turn.'
Her mother pointed to a calendar on the wall and asked her to read it. Kirsty did, just about, with a step in that direction to help. Her mother then said
'I have worse vision than you do, and so do Amy and Melissa. They may well turn out partially blind for all we know, do you realise? They need new glasses more often than you or the other girls, and certainly me.'
'But I'm having trouble at school, I can't read the blackboard at all now!'
In that she was exaggerating, but soon it would be nearer the truth. Her mother replied sharply,
'oh, honestly Kirsty, you can be so stupid. Ask your neighbour to read the board for you, for goodness sake!'
'I'm sitting on my own.'
'Well, get the teacher to move you.'
Kirsty didn't really have an answer to that: she didn't want to draw attention to her poor vision in class, knowing that the others would tease her if she did: they did that enough anyway. With a sour look she realised she wouldn't get new glasses, so walked out of the kitchen. Her mother called after her,
'try pushing up your glasses, you'll be able to see more through the thick bit at the bottom.'
Kirsty paused for a moment, gave an unhappy sigh, then carried on and returned to her bedroom.
She plonked herself down on her bed, then after a moment pulled her diary from under her bed and a pen, opened the diary, then flicked through a couple of pages on the way to today's date. One of them, from about a week ago, said
'Things are getting fuzzier. Wish I could have new glasses.'
She then found today's date, and for it there was no entry. She started to write
'Today I had an argument with my mum about getting new glasses. She said no, and that I would have to wait my turn. My sisters all come before me, I don't quite understand all of this and wish it were me next. Amy and Melissa in June, Emma in August and Louise in October... and me, I have to wait until next January! This is bad news! You know I told you already, well actually lots of times, that I can barely read the blackboard, well it is just getting worse and worse. I wish I could have new glasses, or some friendly girl to sit with me and read me stuff.... and not say a word about my glasses! I'm not the only one with glasses there's Jamie and fatty Sarah too. But mine are thickest. Don't want them thicker. Actually I do because I can't see stuff. Those idiots who call me four-eyes, I hate them sooo much. If this carries on much longer I'll need a white stick! And they'll take the piss more than ever!'
With that, she angrily slapped the diary shut, lay back on the bed, contemplating the ceiling and her fuzzy view of it.
2. May
It was a Saturday morning. Kirsty lay in bed yawning sleepily, then she opened her eyes, blinked and squinted across her small room. Noise came from downstairs: the TV, and laughter, and talking with little consideration for volume. Then she heard her mother calling out, demanding a decrease in said volume. This worked at least to an extent, but it was too late for Kirsty, who by now was undeniably and completely awake. She lay there for a few minutes, trying to recapture her sleep but to no avail: it was gone for today. She sat up and felt on the top of the nearby bedside table for her glasses, found them and shoved them onto her face, then remembered she ought to treat them gently if she wasn't likely to be getting replacements for many months. Alas, these days they were too old and too weak for her, not just slightly but by about 2 dioptres, and a little more astigmatism. That figure might have been a little lost on her, but the fuzziness wasn't.
Yesterday in class she'd had to shove her glasses up just about all the time, and even then it didn't really help her, as well as leaving her nose aching from the pressure. The world, for her, was slowly becoming a relentlessly blurrier and more indistinct place. She'd had another pointless row with her mother again last week: she'd threatened to take her glasses from her if she thought them so useless, which had shut Kirsty up. Being 2 dioptres short was bad enough, but all of it, “no thanks,” she thought. Yet, quite obviously she disliked the situation quite intently, but there was nothing she could do. Her mother did not have the income nor savings to buy her new glasses, so that was that. She looked around her, and it seemed, again, as if her bedroom was fuzzier than the last time she'd looked at it. She wondered how long she would be able to read the board at this rate, “another month or so, tops,” she thought, frowning.
Kirsty went downstairs to see what was happening. Her mother seemed to do nothing but eat, cook, sleep and work, but at the moment was resting in the kitchen. Kirsty looked into the lounge, and saw the two twins, Amy and Melissa, sitting on the old battered sofa. These two younger girls were just at the edge of womanhood, unlike Kirsty who was well on the way there physically. Kirsty walked in, and Amy turned her head to face her, saying,
'hi, Kirsty....'
Kirsty could only really tell them apart close up, which was to be more exact about 5 feet away, but she could tell from their voices: Amy’s voice had an occasional slight rasp to it which Melissa’s did not. Amy looked at her through her myodisk lenses, each of minus 19 in strength and 10mm thickness, and squinted. Melissa stared and squinted at the TV instead though almost identical lenses. Each of them had to look unnaturally close at things to see them properly; after all they had much poorer vision than Kirsty and thus needed more regular adjustments to their correction.
Melissa asked
'Kirsty, can you see the teletext from here?'
Melissa made it flash up on screen, and Kirsty went forward until she could read it, which happened to be about 30cm further away than Melissa or Amy could. It was true, she had better vision than those two, but they had better support, doing their learning at a special school, and were due to get new glasses next month. She wasn't sure if that was fair or not, given the thickness and ugly nature of their lenses. Her mother called, and she went back out to see what she needed doing.
Later on Melissa wrote in her diary
'Today I beat Amy and Melissa at seeing.... not that fab really! They are due for really bad eyesight, I feel very sorry for them, but they don't have to read the same blackboard I do. I'll be unable to read it in a few weeks like this. I can't hack it. What to do? Stick my hand up and ask "please sir, I can't see?" Yeah and how they'll laugh at stupid fuzzy-vision Kirsty. Out in town today the shop signs were a blur. And everything else, peoples faces, too. I have to guess, and sometimes I get it a bit wrong. They're too stupid to realise I can't see them that well, but soon or later people will notice. What I'll do when I can't see, I don't know. It's coming. I hate it, hate the thought of the teasing. Please let me see clearly again, or something.'
3. June
Kirsty came home from school one Monday evening and immediately wrote in her diary
'Today is Monday, and there was a new boy in class. The teacher stuck him next to me! URRRGH! Tell me this is a nightmare so I can wake up? He looks so skinny and ugly. I hate him. Its a joke, I wanted a nice girl for a a friend, but I've got this smelly boy instead.'
On the Friday of the same week, the entry was
'This afternoon in class I copied the boy's work, by looking over his arm. OMG he's so stupid, he doesn't realise what I'm doing. He's so smelly. But, no more squinting. Hope he never realises I'm copying him. My vision is a complete dud now for reading the board now. It's all just fuzzy blurs. Not fair, but I've got someone to copy from now.'
On the following Tuesday:
'He said hello to me! URRGH! I think he's horrible. Wish he'd go away. No I don't though, I need to copy him now or else I'm stuck there and can't read it at all. He's such a dork, it's so funny! He has no idea I'm copying him. What an idiot!'
Saturday morning came and Amy and Melissa were hauled off to the optician to get their new glasses: their mum had finally saved up enough cash to buy their new specs. Kirsty met them in town during the afternoon as they were on the way home. For the two girls, now sporting nice shiny new thicker myodisk lenses in their old frames, the world was a clearer place, not as clear as 20/20 but certainly more so than for their sisters and mother. They were looking around and challenging mostly each other to read things, and sometimes Kirsty. Kirsty herself seemed a little off-colour, and her mum noticed. She asked her about it, but Kirsty just evaded her: she had things on her mind, not just myodisks and sisters.
When she got home she sat on her bed and stared at the increasingly fuzzy pattern on the wallpaper, and then reached for her Diary. She opened it, and realised that she'd not written a thing yesterday, but that was hardly surprising: she had been too preoccupied. She began writing her thoughts
'Well, he's not the big stupid dork I thought. Well, he is, sort of. Thursday I caught him looking at me funny, not at my tits or anything like that, don't know what to do if he did. He was looking at my face, my glasses, not for long, but long enough for me to notice, if you see what I mean. And Friday too. Well yesterday was kinda weird. He didn't let me copy his work, and I sat there struggling to read the board and all that, like I did before. I caught him looking at me doing it too, and he looked away quick. I didn't know what to do! Sit there looking stupid? I felt like crying or getting angry or something. I went for irritated. I'd sussed out he was onto me and my vision, so I poked him in the arm with my pen and told him to move it and let me read. After a bit he did, too. He asked me if I could see the blackboard and all that, you know, and I could hardly lie. It didn't seem to bother him.'
After a pause she wrote
'He's OK.'
4. July
There was a knock at Kirsty's door, and in came Emma. She was eight years old and wanting to play some game outside, a reasonable proposition considering the glorious weather. Unfortunately, Kirsty was supposed to be studying for end-of-year exams: she'd got herself a headache after staring at books for too long, which with poor vision wasn't really very long. She yawned deliberately, got up, and heard Emma run excitedly downstairs and though to the back yard. Emma sported a little pair of glasses herself, minus 4 each eye but needing new glasses, like Kirsty and her mother. Luckily Emma’s visual decay wasn't anywhere near as quick as Kirsty's: she’d grumbled that Emma did not need new glasses, therefore why couldn't she have them instead? That got her nowhere. Kirsty had been told that there had been times when she'd been dealt with first, so this time was Emma first, her mother could not afford new glasses all the time for everyone. She deliberately didn't think of that as she bopped a ball back and forth with Emma. Kirsty's corrected vision was worse than Emmas, or her mothers, she was sure. Despite the general fuzziness, the game went well enough.
Later on Kirsty wrote in her Diary
'My vision has got to be the worst in our family, I am sure of it. And do I get new glasses? Nooooo! My Mum can't f-ing afford them yet! Anyway don't worry about that. Paul, you know Dorky boy, well, he's been kinda nice to me. Well, at least he hasn't teased me about my specs and my crud vision, so..... maybe, you know, he might just be OK after all. We've been having exams all week, and I can't sit next to him or copy. I can't see the clock, but he lent me his watch.'
A few days later, two days before they were due to break up for the school holidays, she wrote
'Paul is going away for the summer up north. Shame, I was beginning to like him. I don't want to tell him, it might give some crazy ideas... I don't like him that much, you know.'
Two days later, the last day of the school year came, and went, and Kirsty came home with a strange, wondering, mystified and rather pleased look and air about her, which she quickly tried to hide until she got herself up into the privacy of her tiny bedroom. There she sat on her bed, and took out the little folded scrap of paper she'd found in her bag earlier that day, and unfolded it. It read
'Kirsty, you look so pretty in glasses - Paul.'
Uncertain of the truth of that, she looked at her reflection in the mirror, peering closely now to see herself clearly. Her view of her own face was going the way of everyone else's: a blur at a ridiculously short distance. She was having some trouble recognizing people in the distance, and only got away with by pretending to be not looking at all. But by looking from around two feet away, she saw what Paul saw: her slightly squarish oval metal-framed glasses, the thick lenses pushing her face in each side, her eyes blinking and shrunken behind them. Was this pretty? She thought she knew what pretty was, and in her opinion it wasn't really this: her bespectacled state.
She wrote
'Paul called me pretty in glasses. I am amazed. Didn't realise he liked me that much. Unless it was a joke. Hope it wasn't a joke.'
she sighed, and continued
'Don't think it was a joke. Don't know what to do now. It's a shame he's going away. Well, at least no more blackboards to read for six weeks!'
5. August
Kirsty sat at the table, next to Louise who was 4 that very day, also sporting a little pair of glasses. “Yet another girl with glasses,” Kirsty thought: she hoped that Louise would get her new glasses when she needed them, not when there was money for them, such as was her situation. She was a pretty little kid really, and glasses made her look funny more than anything else.
Kirsty wrote in her diary:
'Today was my kid sister's birthday, what a mess she made with the cake all over her glasses! Anyway Emma got new specs today too: they're nearly as thick as mine! That makes me definitely the girl with the worst vision around here. I'm getting used to pushing up my specs and squinting, and I do it so often people are starting to notice, not just Paul. Thankfully I'm on holiday and I don't need to read blackboards right now. But it's such a pain, I go out with my mates and every so often there's something to be read over there or whatever and I can’t see it. My vision is just so pooey.'
A few days later she was in the park lazing on the ground with a couple of her friends. The sun was blazing down on them from a sky of that light blue that can only come on such a day, virtually unblemished by clouds. The heat was agreeably warm and soothing, but not warm enough to stop young children playing football some distance away. Her friend Alice said
'oh, it's a lovely day, hardly a cloud in the sky.'
Her other friend, Jessica, smiled and said 'yeah', without bothering to open her eyes.
Kirsty said nothing. She looked around, but couldn't see any clouds. Her fuzzy vision turned the few wispy, high remnants and suggestions of a cloudy day into patches of sky indistinguishable from the rest of it.
Alice continued in the same vein with,
'that one looks like a puppy.'
Kirsty looked and saw nothing, so countered,
'you're joking, it just looks like a cloud to me.'
Jessica opened her eyes and said, with a little conspiratorial giggle,
'that one looks like a penis!'
Alice dug at her with her elbow, saying,
'so you know what one looks like?'
'Course I do.... I'm just not saying how!'
Alice laughed at her. Kirsty stayed silent, so Jessica said to her,
'you would know, wouldn't you?'
'Know what?'
'Oh, never mind.'
After a while, Alice turned around and rolled over to watch the kids kicking the ball around: there were about twenty of them around 30-40 metres away, enough to be seen but not heard that much. After a moment or two Kirsty followed suit, but for her, any sort of football match held little fascination even at the best of times. With her current fuzzy vision, with which she could identify someone reliably only about 3-4 meters away at best, what was going on over there was just a bunch of kids running around: even the ball was hard to see. Kirsty blinked and squinted, and then soon got bored with looking at those fuzzy kids doing whatever they appeared to be doing.
A few days later she wrote in her diary, as it was pouring with rain and she had nothing much else to do with her time.
'I wish Paul was around. I hope he comes back in time for the new term.'
6. September
After the first day back at school, Kirsty told her Diary
'Well, today was my first day back at school. My eyesight has got worse again over the holidays, but what can I do about it? It's been a bit crazy for me. People are getting so hard to recognize, I made two mistakes today, OMG! And as if that wasn't bad enough, fatty Sarah has got new glasses. So unfair!!! That fat spotty lump has richer parents than me. Or else more parents than I have. Life is a bit shitty with these old glasses now, and I'm fast getting sick of them. Only Paul makes things OK again, reading the blackboard for me and stuff. He's really great. Yeah I know I said he was a dork, but that was before I knew him.'
About a week later Kirsty was sat at the dinner table one evening, and looked from person to person, and from face to face, and reflected how odd life was. All her sisters, apart from the obvious exception of the twins, were fathered by different men, so didn't look that much alike: the difference was most marked between her and the twins, but also Emma was also growing up and changing: but the stupid thing was, for her, that she
didn’t need to move more than a few feet away for them all to start looking very much the same.
Near the end of the month she wrote in her Diary
'Today was very strange but interesting. My friend Paul showed me this book with an eyechart in, and lent me it to me: it's sitting propped up against the wall right now, and even there I can't read half of it. That's kinda scary. According to this book, that means I'm going to need another 2 or 3 dioptres of strength in my glasses, I think. I don't like the sound of that, and not the look of it neither. My glasses are thick enough now. But new glasses, that's a nice thought, I would like to see clearly again. I'd rather have contacts. I wonder if my mum will let me get contacts? I'm dreaming again, aren't I? She can barely afford to feed and clothe us and buy us all glasses, so contacts - forget it. But maybe it's no big problem. Paul likes me in glasses, he said so again. Woah! That’s too weird for me! But it also feels good.'
The next day Kirsty told Paul what she thought her vision was: 1.5 dioptres short of her real prescription. She felt she needed to lie: even at this point, she was not wishing to put him off with her potentially thick glasses. The reality was that he wasn't at all bothered by her thick glasses: quite the contrary, viewing them as splendid and beautiful things on this pretty young teenager’s face.
7. October
One foggy Saturday morning Kirsty wrote in her Diary
'The weather's shitty today so I don't want to go out. It's all foggy, just like my vision. Really, it's all the same to me, fog or no fog, it's just the cold that’s different. My little sister Louise is getting new specs: she's going to need thick specs when she grows up, I bet. It means everyone but me has good vision. Actually, no, mum still has her old glasses, she's had them forever, and Amy & Melissa are getting worse again. The optician reckons they'll be effectively partially blind even with correction by the time they are 18, around minus 35 and mega thick glasses! I'm feel glad I've only got minus 9 or whatever it is now. Except that I haven't got the right glasses yet. One good thing: I'm next for new glasses. Yippie! But no, not really, not yet. January! That's three months away! Three more foggy months for me. Oh yeah Emma is now nine. At that age I didn't wear glasses at all. And she's got glasses almost as bad as mine. Hope she doesn't end up having to wait for glasses like me!'
A few days later at school she was walking along the corridor: some girls happened to walk the other way, and as they came nearer one said something about her being "four eyes", which she hadn't really have much problem with, it was the truth if not politely put. But then another said to her,
'how's your boyfriend, Pauly? Is he good in bed?'
Kirsty stomped off to her classroom in a huff, and arrived red-faced. Paul looked at her and said, quiet-voiced,
'Hi Kirsty. What's wrong?'
'Oh just Karen Peterson....'
'Who? What did she say?'
'She said.... she said you were my boyfriend.'
'Aren't I?'
She paused a moment, and then said uncertainly,
'no....'
That put Paul into a rather inward-looking, dazed and confused mental state. He'd been hoping for, well, really whatever good might come of sitting next to this pretty bespectacled girl. Kirsty’s answer made him pensive and a bit withdrawn for the whole lesson, and he spoke little. She had to prompt him to help her with the blackboard again and again, but did not ask why this was suddenly necessary. She knew the reason.
She wrote in her Diary at the end of the next day
'I feel really guilty. Paul has been so good to me and I shot him down like that, and he wasn't there at all today, so it was a real struggle for me at school. I hope he's back tomorrow. I need him.'
At the end of the week she wrote
'Still no sign of Paul. The Teacher said he had the flu. Somehow I don't believe him, because he seemed fine the last time I saw him. But not OK inside, if you know what I mean. Oh, I feel so bad now. Paul has been floating around in my head all week, and I've had a crap week at school, been caught looking like a stupid dork trying to read the blackboard and all that, made to feel stupid. That's it, I'm just stupid.'
She stopped for a moment and choked back a little sob, and she had to put down the diary and wipe away a tear that welled in her eye and rolled down her cheek. Then her expression turned into resolution, and she concluded her writing with
'This is what I'll do. I'll go and visit him tomorrow.'
She went around looking for the phone book to get his address, then found it, and started looking though it for his name. The small print she found hard to read: it surprised her that small print could be so hard on her eyes. They were getting worse, that was true, and she was well aware of her harshly uncorrected myopia causing her difficulties in the distance. But close up? She barely wanted to think about that, so her thoughts moved rapidly back to Paul. But he was not in the phone book. She thumped it closed, and then for a while wondered why, thinking that perhaps he did not have a phone. And then it came to her: Paul had only moved here in June, so he wouldn’t be in the phone book published in April. “Durrr!” She thought to herself. Where else could she look? Her mind raced. Then she saw on the back of the book a list of "useful phone numbers" and one of them was the local council offices. They had lists of local taxpayers there, surely? Surely his parents had to be registered for tax, no? Could she not get his address that way?
The next morning, Saturday, she got up fairly bright but definitely early and went into town to find the council offices with the intention of bullying them into giving up her boyfriend's address. Her mind caught, tripped and stopped at that, but then shrugged and carried on, accepting the thought of “boyfriend?” with, “Yeah, OK.” She shrugged as she waited for the bus, squinting at the bus numbers as they drew into view. Thankfully there were not many buses to choose from here, so mistakes were difficult to make even for someone poor-sighted. She got on the right bus and arrived at the council offices in good time, asked to see the Tax record listing and was shown a computer terminal and allowed to get on with it. Here, again, she found that the small text seemed to stab at her eyes and make them itch. But she had to do it, and it didn't take long. She scribbled his address down, along with the phone number and hopped on another bus home.
Once on home territory, she walked around to the street where Paul lived. Looking up at fuzzy street signs taxed her myopic vision severely, but she'd been around these parts long enough to have a fair idea of what was there without having to read all the road signs. She walked up and down the right street a little uncertainly, as if she were lost, but the real reason was that she wasn't sure about the house numbers. For anyone else with decent vision, the house numbers were more than easy to read. She wasn't quite sure which was no 68. That one? Or that one? That was 72, she could see it on the gate post. She stood and squinted for rather longer than she would have wished, not wanting to look as if she was sizing up a house for a burglary. She had to walk down the drive a little to read it, and then found it was 66. “Oh well, it's the next one”, she thought.
She went to the door of what she hoped was no 68, which perversely had no street number sign, and rang the bell. A middle-aged man answered the door, and found this pretty-looking bespectacled girl at the door, dressed in jumper and jeans. She asked to see Paul, and when he asked who she was, she said
'I'm his friend.'
'Oh, OK. Come in, he's upstairs in bed.'
He called upstairs rather tactlessly, as Kirsty walked up the carpeted stairs
'Paul! It's your girlfriend!'
Kirsty found Paul sitting up in his bed watching TV. He looked pale, and once he took in the fact that Kirsty was here, rather shocked and stunned, but very pleased to see her. She sat on chair away from the bed, because he told her he didn't want her to get the flu too, which was fair enough. Kirsty felt this strange urge to be with him, which she didn't quite understand. They talked a little, and sat watching TV for a while. He had to read something on screen for her. Then he asked kindly,
'how's your eyesight?'
She answered sourly,
'like poo!'
She knew that she couldn’t stay for long, because his parents would start wondering what they were up to. But, she had to do it. Mustering herself and her determination, she said goodbye, and kissed him on the cheek. And then she was gone, sure that she had done the right thing.
8. November
Early in November Kirsty wrote in her Diary
'My eyesight is getting so cruddy. Not just in the distance, but I've noticed that in bad light or when I'm tired, my eyes itch and I want to scratch them, that’s crazy I know. It's still foggy outside of course, mostly because of me I think. I'm not sure I can tell the difference between real fog and my fog any more. I tried asking mum for new glasses, she told me Christmas was coming and she couldn't afford it just now. But she did pat me on the head and tell me I was next. Oh, why can't it be January now? Anyway Paul is now my boyfriend, officially. It means nobody teases me anymore, not about him nor about my glasses. And he is so kind and helpful in class. I can't believe nobody's spotted I'm half blind, but that's because of him. I suppose if I'd not met him, I'd have been sussed out ages ago and they'd have got onto my mum about it. What she could actually do about it I don't know.'
A few days later at school, Paul stood with Kirsty, sheltering from the cold wind behind a wall, and said to her
'Kirsty, I've been thinking.'
Kirsty instantly wondered what he's been thinking about. Kisses here and there were fine. What else did he want?'
'Kirsty, you and I both know that you need new glasses, and can't afford them.'
'Yeah, what's new?'
'Why don't we start an appeal to buy new glasses for you? Sort of like a whip round, you know. We can do sponsored walks and stuff.... '
At that his voice trailed off, because Kirsty had walked off in a big huff, arms folded around herself to keep out the chill wind.
He ran after her, caught up with her and asked, with a perplexed expression on his face,
'what's wrong? What did I say?'
She stopped, glared up at him, shook her head, and sighed deeply, and then spoke animatedly.
'I don't want that. It's embarrassing for me. I don't like being short sighted. I don't like having to wear glasses. I don't like that my mum can't afford new glasses, so I have to see everything like I'm in a fog all the time. Most of all I don't want people to know all that. You know that because I told you and you're smart enough to have twigged it anyway. Please, don't do this. I hope you were just being kind. If you are joking about this, well... I don't want to see you again.'
His shoulders dropped, hoping she did not mean what she just said. He simply and dumbly said,
'I was only trying to help.'
'Yeah, OK. Look, stick to reading stuff for me, OK?'
'Yeah, OK.'
They went back to the shelter of the wall and kissed till break time was over.
Kirsty wrote in her Diary that evening
'Paul had an idea for some kind of charity appeal for new specs for me. I like the thought of new glasses, but I'd rather just get them the normal way! He can be such a dork at times. Sorry Paul. He's trying to help, I know. And he said I looked pretty in glasses again. That's good news, anyway. I was beginning to think he didn't like me because of what I'd said about his idea.'
9. December
Early on in December Kirsty wrote
'Paul came around for tea today. It was fun. He seemed quite subdued. Well, he normally does, I think he's a fairly shy person, only opening up when you prod him. He seemed quite surprised by the rest of my family, 4 sisters and my mum, all wearing glasses. I don't know any family around here like ours. It's really strange, Paul seems to like girls with glasses, when he doesn't wear them himself. I always thought like goes with like. But no boy with glasses ever looked at me twice. Actually no boy at all before Paul did.'
Kirsty sat doing her homework, and then later on she stopped, her head aching. Was it her imagination or did she have a headache yesterday? Or the day before? Yes, it was the day before. Headaches, "great!" She thought. She had to stop and find her mother again, grab a paracetamol or two and then get on with it. After homework, she engaged in another fruitless attempt to get her glasses hurried up. Her mother told her firmly,
'it's Christmas soon, I can't afford to put money into the glasses fund at the moment. Be more patient: my eyes are worse too, and I don't complain. Amy and Melissa are the same, you'll just have to wait till January.
Kirsty muttered unhappily,
'put another record on.'
'What did you just say?'
'Oh, forget it.'
and that was that.
A few days later Kirsty was peering into the mirror. Behind her the wall was a muddy blue blur, but that wasn't what she was looking at. She was looking at herself again, silently asking herself “is this pretty?”
She had to stand about eighteen inches away to see herself mostly clearly. The manner in which her lenses distorted her face wasn't pretty to her, and that was with completely inadequate ones too. What would new glasses do? She took off her glasses and her bedroom promptly seemed to melt into a foggy smear. She looked closely at herself, peering from 6 inches at her reflection in the mirror. Was that pretty too? She admitted to herself that looking at things in the mirror more than 6 inches away without glasses made telling the difference between pretty and ugly difficult. She went and lay down on the bed, replacing her glasses before she moved so that she didn't have to feel her way there, and lay looking up at the ceiling. These days it seemed as if someone had wiped that black mark off the ceiling, but had not done a thorough job: all that remained was a grubby grey area, indistinct and shifting mischievously. She knew, of course, that the mark couldn't really be washed off, and that it remained up there, defiant of her poor vision and her feeble efforts to focus that far away; she knew it was still there because she could see it while standing up on her bed. “At this rate”, she thought unhappily, “it'll be gone in a month or two”.
A week before Christmas Kirsty wrote
'Well, it's nearly Christmas. Mum is right, it is expensive this time of year, but I wish I could have my new glasses for Christmas. She says its Christmas for everyone and no glasses, or glasses for you and no Christmas for everyone else. It's my hard luck that I have to suffer. Yeah I know Amy and Melissa have way worse vision that I do, well in terms of thick specs, but they still see better than I do! Amy asked me to tell her what something was last week and I couldn't tell her, I had to tell her I couldn't read it either, she understood all about that. I really hope I can help in future. We were putting up Christmas decorations yesterday, and it wasn't fun for me, because down here I can't see them so well as last year. Well, I can't see anything as well as last year. Never mind, it'll be Christmas gone by soon, January after that and new glasses, at last! I wonder what they'll be like - thick, I think. I hope I never have to wear those things Amy and Melissa have, they look awful! But I'll be in a pair of thick slab lenses, oh, what will I look like, some kind of mega-geek?'
10. January
One evening early in the new year Kirsty wrote
'Well, here we are, January and I am all excited about getting my new glasses, it's coming closer and closer, just like the blackboard if I want to read it. Sorry, sarcasm. To think that after a year of fuzz and fog, I'll be able to see again. Imagine, me reading the blackboard again! I haven't done that for months and months. I hope Paul will still like me in what I think will be much thicker and uglier glasses. He's nice, so I think he will.'
She gave a sigh and shut the diary.
A few days later she heard the washing machine downstairs slow right down from spin mode, and then begin to fill with cold water for a rinse; ordinary enough sounds in a busy household, but then suddenly Kirsty heard a shriek of dismay. She dropped her homework and went to look. Peering down from the top of the stairs didn't help much, so she went down to find out what had happened. As she did so, her mum cried out
‘Oh shit, shit! Now what do I do?’
Kirsty went into the kitchen and found that floor was covered in water: the washing machine had obviously sprung a leak, which considering its age and workload was hardly surprising. Her mother gave her an utterly desperate, desolate look, and then started mopping up. Kirsty helped her, and her mother shooed the rest of the girls out so they could work faster. Her mother gave an extremely exasperated sigh, and said wearily,
'just what I need!'
Then she kicked the machine, as if that would help.
Kirsty went to school the next day feeling extremely worried. The appliance repairman said he'd come that day to look at it, but he couldn't say what the problem was until he'd examined it properly. Kirsty felt sick inside, because she knew what that probably meant: the thing would need expensive parts, or might even need to be junked. Her mother had warily avoided the issue before she left for school, but Kirsty well knew what that implied: buying a new one, and she knew that her mother had no spare money apart from.... the glasses fund. She sighed, and idly hoped that it might mean a week or two's delay, at most.
When she got back home, the full depth of her fears were realised: her mother came up to her bedroom after her and shut the door, looking pale, unhappy and regretful, obviously wishing that she did not have to say what she had to say. She said sadly
'Kirsty, can we talk?
She faced her mother, all but certain what she was about to hear.
'The washing machine man came round this afternoon, and he had bad news for me, for us. The machine is too badly damaged to be worth fixing - he said it was best to replace it. We need a washing machine, otherwise in two-three days we go without clothes. The launderette is too expensive, you know. Now, you know we are poor, we do our best but we can't afford a new one right now. The only way is to....'
She choked back a sob, and Kirsty replied,
'yeah, I know, mum.'
Her mother nodded, and continued
'I'm sorry, Kirsty, we need a new washing machine. Can you wait another month for your new glasses?'
Kirsty stood open-mouthed for a moment. Then she gave voice to her sudden anger, shock and disappointment,
'you're joking? After all this time, another month?'
'Kirsty.... please, there's nothing I can do.'
The pain of that simple resignation was plain to see on her mother face.
'But... I've been waiting months and months, everyone else has got new glasses, I can't see, and now...'
Kirsty fumed in useless anger and frustration: it wasn't her mums fault, really. Her mother went out and left her to it, and later came back in to offer whatever comfort she could by means of a hug,
Later on that day she wrote in her diary
'Well, I have to wait another month for my new glasses. Life is shit isn't it? The washing machine broke down and my mum needs the glasses fund to help pay for a new one. So, next month, new specs! I'm beginning to wish I'd gone with Paul's whip round idea.'
11. February
A week into February, Kirsty wrote in her diary,
'mum has bought us a new washing machine. To be honest I can see her point, I can still see and can wait a few more weeks. Better than wearing smelly, dirty clothes! Paul would definitely run if I'd done that! Only 10 days to my eye exam.'
Four days later she went up to her mother, and asked
'Mum, is my eye exam still next week?'
'Yes, of course, Kirsty. Don't worry, it'll happen, I'll make sure of it.'
To be honest, she couldn't make absolutely sure of it, as Kirsty well knew. By trimming things here and there, in places where usually she would not dare trim a penny, she had scraped enough money together to buy a cheap secondhand washing machine without too much of a raid on the glasses fund. With a little luck, what was left in it would be enough to get Kirsty two new lenses for her glasses. Her mother was praying that her old frames would take new lenses: they were tough metal frames, but she knew some frames would not hold certain lenses: she definitely could not afford new frames for Kirsty. She didn’t dare think about the possibility of Kirsty needing new frames. What were the choices? Postpone and watch Kirsty go crazy at her, or struggle on and postpone the twins? Either alternative stunk badly.
The remaining few days crawled by: Kirsty got more and more excitable and nervous as each day passed. The thought of banishing the fog from her vision drew her on, and she checked the washing machine and everything else in the kitchen, hoping that nothing else would go bang or otherwise wrong.
Finally Tuesday the 17th dawned, and Kirsty went for her long awaited and anticipated eye exam. She sat in the chair and read what little she could of the eyechart with her old glasses, those oddly useful yet useless things through which she'd seen the world slowly vanish. Her optician looked rather coldly at her mother for a moment when he realised just how poor Kirsty's vision was, but then he also realised that she wasn't exactly rich. He handed her the prescription: it read RE -10.00D, -2.00D × 165; LE -10.25D, -1.75D × 180. Her mother blinked at it: she was used to reading strong prescriptions, like those of her younger daughters, Amy and Melissa. But she'd not realised Kirsty had been struggling with so much myopia for so long. She glanced at Kirsty, and mouthed to her
'I’m sorry.'
The optician told her firmly,
'you really should have brought her in sooner, you know: she really can't see very well through those old glasses.'
They went to the sales area and started haggling about new glasses. Her mother said,
'can she have this prescription in her old frames, please?'
He took the old glasses from her, leaving Kirsty in an even worse fog than usual. She heard him say,
'yes, I suppose so. They won't look so great, though, I warn you. The new lenses will be considerably thicker than the old ones.'
Her mother looked visibly relieved at that: if she'd wiped her brow and said "phew!" it couldn't have been any more obvious. By now Kirsty had her glasses back and was now seeing the world passably well, at least within a few feet. He told her mother a few prices, and she went for the cheapest option: even that wiped out any spare money. The optician explained that if she wanted these lenses, they'd be a bit thicker, and asked if she wanted a plano base curve to help with the thickness? She looked at Kirsty, and then answered on her behalf,
'yes, please.'
Kirsty asked,
'what's a plano base curve?'
'Glasses like mine, dear.'
Kirsty looked quite dismayed. Her mother had worn plano front lenses, that is with a flat front, which in Kirsty’s opinion flashed and glinted in the light badly. She had no choice: either have ugly glasses and clear vision now, or wait more months for something slightly better. She'd done enough waiting, and resigned herself to the ugly, thick, flat-fronted lenses, lacking any improvements like anti-reflection coating that more money could buy.
Her mother paid, and then took Kirsty out to walk around for a bit while the lenses were ground. Overall, Kirsty was still excited and pleased at getting new glasses, even if they would be ugly ones. She was worried that Paul might take one look at her and run, but there was no choice, thus about 45 minutes later they walked back into the optician and were called into his exam room. A few minutes later Kirsty sat in the optician's chair lacking even her old glasses: they'd been taken so they could replace the lenses. Time seemed to drag, especially since there was no way she could read the clock on the wall, not even standing under it, certainly not from here: 15 feet away it looked like a round white thing hanging pointlessly on the wall, ticking at her mockingly.
And then the door opened, and her optician came in bearing her new glasses, or to be exact her old frames with new lenses in. They had taken a little bit of shoehorning to get them in, because her frames were more apt for thinner lenses, but they were in and that was that. She could only see them a couple of feet away, and only in detail when she took them and held them close to her face. She felt the thickness of the lenses with her fingertips, not quite believing her poor vision. They seemed like big chunks of clear ice, cold and smooth. Then she put them on, and blinked, and the whole world jumped into harsh and vivid clarity. Her eyes looked around, and she could not resist a smile as she started to see really clearly for the first time in over a year.
Her optician got her to read the eyechart, and she read the whole thing, then tore her newly corrected gaze away to look at her mother. She now looked astonishingly bright and sharp, almost unnervingly and unnaturally so. The soft blur she'd been so used to was gone, at last! She smiled again, and then murmured softly to her,
‘I can see.'
She smiled back, grateful that at last she had been able to do this for her daughter. There was a little paperwork to do, which Kirsty was pleased to leave to her mother while she got up and realised that the whole world seemed to jump around her: these new lenses would need some getting used to, and that was excluding what they looked like on her. She picked up a looking-glass that was on hand for those wishing to know just what they looked like wearing glasses, and tentatively peeked into it. Her mouth slowly opened as she took in the way her new lenses distorted her face, pushed in her cheeks and shrank her eyes down to not much more than half their real size. And then she turned a little, causing her plano fronted lenses to catch a little light: they flashed like two little searchlights, a phenomena she wasn't keen on. She briefly peeped over them, seeing which her mother told her sharply,
'I just bought them for you, so look through them, please?'
Kirsty replied flatly, ‘yes, mum,' and complied.
Kirsty’s journey back home was mixture of her mother testing her eyesight, which was a little pointless since her own was pretty lousy, and also worrying how Paul might react to them. It was too late to go back to school by the time they got home, so Kirsty went upstairs and did homework. Paul came about 7 PM-ish: when he arrived, her mother called up to her
'Kirsty! Paul's here!'
Kirsty did not come down, so her mother told him,
'oh, just go up anyway.'
Paul almost ran up, knocked at her door, and heard Kirsty say,
'come in, then.'
She sat with her back facing away from the door. Paul said, anticipation in his voice
'Did you get your new glasses?'
'Yeah.'
She turned to face him slowly. At first only her frames appeared past her brushed-forward hair, but then just a hint, and then the full thickness of her lenses was plain to see. He fought back a strange urge to take a ruler to them and measure their thickness, but they looked pretty close to half an inch thick, and in frames that were on normal aesthetic grounds unsuitable for such thick lenses. And they were plano fronted too: as she turned her head, a little more a combination of a mass of light rings in the lenses and the reflections on the front grabbed his attention, and then her gaze fell on him, heavily corrected, seeing him without effort nor any sign of squinting. Her mouth twitched in anticipation of imagined disappointment, rejection: she harboured horrible thoughts of him telling her that she didn't look pretty anymore in glasses, more like awful with her eyes behind those crystalline wedges.
But there was no sign of dismay, disgust, mickey-taking or anything of that ilk on Paul's face: just amazement, and then a gentle, rather pleased smile. He told her,
'you still look pretty in glasses, Kirsty.'
She slumped a little in relief, all the stiffness of uncertainty gushing out of her mind, then replied,
'really?'
'Yeah, you look fab.'
She stood up and hugged him. After a moment, he asked,
'can you see clearly now?'
'yes, of course, these thick specs are just right for my vision now.'
At the weekend, she wrote in her Diary
'Well, I have new glasses at long last, and I can see everything again! The downside is the thickness of my new lenses. Some people have said how thick they look, and not always so nicely as Paul. He is great about them. Is it me, or does he seem to like me even more now? I don't dare say it, but now I don't need him to read the blackboard anymore. I just want him to be my boyfriend and love me, and I don't think I have big problems with that. You should see the doe-eyed looks he gives me, oh he's still a bit of a dork (sorry again) but I love him.'
Statistics: Posted by val — Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:03 pm