Around the time I turned 39 I found out that my father had been harboring a secret for many years. When I finally realized what his secret was I was able to look back on my life as my sisters and I grew up and realize that there were times when his secret was obvious to anyone who was able to open their eyes and see, but no one ever did. His secret wasn’t really anything that would bring him shame if it had been brought out into the open, but because of his position in life it might possibly have caused a few people to question his past actions. Before I reveal this secret I think I should first fill you in on some pertinent facts.
My dad was born in 1945, just before the end of the second word war. His father was a fighter pilot in the American air force, and was stationed at Lancaster air base in England. It was there that he met my grandmother, who was a nurse in the Canadian Red Cross. Gram was also stationed at the same air base, as both Canadian and American planes flew from there to bomb the German’s. They married while they were in England, and somehow or another Gran ended up pregnant with my dad. She was allowed to leave England before her time was up and return to Canada, where my father was born.
After the end of hostilities in Europe my grandfather came to Canada to see his newborn son. Granddad could have returned to the States with my grandmother and their now 9 month old baby, but he found work in Canada and he stayed there for the rest of his life.
As my father tells the story, he was not much of a scholar. He wanted to bum around the USA, but he had one small problem. As the child of an American citizen he had to register for the draft at the age of 18, and as he tried to cross the border soon after he had turned 18 back in the summer of 1963 he was advised by Immigration that if he did not register he would be classified as a draft dodger and could be forever denied entry to the USA. Having nothing better to do with his life at that moment Dad decided that not only would he register, he would sign up for the army. He was fortunate. The war in Viet Nam was just getting rolling then and there were no US troops on the ground there until March of 1965 so dad was not sent there. He served his full 2 years in Germany and received an honorable discharge, ending his military obligations.
When dad came back to the states he decided that he would go on to university under the G.I. bill. And, since he had served his time in the military he was now considered an American citizen. His best friend when he was posted to the base in Germany came from the Los Angeles area and dad headed to California to join him, where he went to school. It took dad 7 years to get his license as an optometrist and for a few years he worked for another optometrist in his practice. While he was working there he met and married my mom, who was a patient of his
My oldest sister Erin was born in 1976, I was born in 1978 and my younger sister Sarah was born in 1980. We were raised in an area just north of San Diego and we had an ideal childhood. Mom was pretty shortsighted and both Erin and Sarah had inherited her myopia. With my dad being an optometrist both my sisters and I had frequent eye exams.
Erin was prescribed her first pair of glasses when she was around 8 years old. Her first pair was not a pair that she needed to wear all the time, but she did wear them to school, and for watching the television at night in the evenings. When she got her next pair of glasses she started to wear them all the time. I was almost 2 years younger than Erin, and when I was around 8 dad also examined my eyes. I did not need glasses at this time, but my sister Sarah, who was then 6, had to get her first pair of glasses. I didn’t know at the time if it was because her big sister wore glasses all the time, or if it was because Sarah really needed her glasses that caused Sarah to wear her glasses full time.
When Erin was 14 she started working for dad after school and on weekends. Her job consisted mostly of cleaning up around the little optical lab that dad had opened up to make the lower powered glasses that most of his customers needed, as well as restocking the frame racks with replacements of the frames that had sold, along with creating space for the new arrivals. Both Erin and Sarah liked wearing their glasses because dad always made sure that they had the newest most stylish frames to wear in whatever their current prescription was. I envied Erin, and I wanted to work at the store as well, but dad told me that I would have to wait until I was 14 before he could give me a job.
I did not have much interest in girls. Sure, I had two sisters, and they were all right as far as girls went, but as far as going out with a girl and even kissing one like some of my friends talked about did not interest me in the slightest. One day, not too long after I had turned 13, my dad came into my room, and he talked to me for about an hour. He told me that girls had an important part to play in a man’s life, and the sooner I could learn how to deal with girls the easier my life would be. He told me many things that day and as I grew older I learned that everything he said was true. The most interesting part of dad’s conversation was when he told me that there was something I could help him out with, and if I was willing to do what he asked, he would give me an increase in my allowance.
Dad went on to tell me that he had a young lady who was almost my age. She had worn glasses since she was about 3 years of age, and her prescription had gotten a little worse every year since she got her first pair. Now, at age 13, her prescription had jumped significantly, and her glasses were going to be quite thick. Dad felt that as soon as she saw her new, much thicker glasses, her self-confidence, which was already pretty low, was going to be shattered. What he proposed was that he wanted me to be in the office when he had her come in to have her new glasses fitted, and he wanted me to show her that I was interested in her, even with her thick glasses.
I thought about his proposal. I really wasn’t interested in the girl, and I didn’t care at all how badly her new glasses destroyed her self-confidence. But the increase in allowance interested me. Also, dad threw in another bribe. Any money I spent on taking this girl anywhere on a date would be reimbursed. With that offer I agreed to see if I could help him.
That was how I got my first date with Lynn Crane. She was a pretty enough girl, and already her breasts had started to grow considerably. She had a bigger chest size at age 13 than my sister Erin did at 15. But dad was right, Her glasses were terribly thick and as I got to know Lynn over the next couple of months I found that dad was correct in thinking that Lynn would lose what little bit of self-confidence she had left if she had not found a boyfriend. My biggest problem was going to be how to get rid of her without killing the increased self-confidence she had gotten by having me in her life.
Lynn lived way over on the far side of the city. The bus service was not that great, and often I was a little late for our dates. Lynn realized that I was really going out of my way to date her and one day she surprised me by asking me if I minded if she dated someone else. Apparently one of the older guys at her high school wanted to go out with her, but Lynn was a really decent person and she told this guy that she needed to talk to me about it first. My first thought was that I would miss the money that dad was paying me, but then I realized that I was spending most of it travelling to see Lynn. I told her that I really liked her, but I only wanted her to be happy, and she should date this other guy if she really liked him. Lynn had realized that our romance wasn’t really going anywhere because I still had a zillion years of school ahead of me before I could become an eye doctor.
I told dad that Lynn and I were no longer going together, and he told me not to worry, as he was sure he could find me another girl who needed a confidence booster. In the meantime, since I was now almost 14, I was going to take over Erin’s job at the store and Erin was going to help patients learn how to insert and remove their contact lenses. But first I had to have my annual eye exam. That was when I got my first glasses. They were only -1.25D, and I suppose I should have hated wearing them, but I didn’t. I felt that I belonged in glasses. That was possibly because both my sisters and my mom wore them, but it was likely because I was surrounded by glasses every day I went in to work, and it just seemed right that I could wear them as well.
Sheila Stone was the second girl I dated. Since I was working at the office I had access to all the patient’s files, and as soon as I saw Sheila in person I was interested in her. She had come in for an eye exam, and her already strong prescription had increased by about -2D. I liked what I saw when I helped Sheila chose a new frame for her myodiscs. According to her files Sheila had gotten her first pair of myodiscs when she was only 7 and had a prescription of -15D. Her second pair had come when she was 9, and her prescription had climbed to -16.00D. Now Sheila was 13 and her prescription had jumped to -17.50D. I asked dad if he wanted to make the same deal he had made with me when I dated Lynn if I asked Sheila out. Dad told me that he didn’t think Sheila was lacking in self-confidence the same way Lynn had been and it was up to me if I wanted to date Sheila. He did tell me though that he would give me a little bump in my allowance if I dated her, so that opened the door for me right there.
Sheila was very attractive. She had long black hair that she wore either straight down or else up in a ponytail. She did wear bangs, and most of the time her bangs brushed the top of the frames of her glasses. And the way her long hair hung when she had it down ensured that you couldn’t get too good a look at the thickness of her lenses. Her lenses were a little different from the other myodiscs I had seen. They had a flat front on the lenses and the rear bowl was ground into a flat carrier. This made for a very nice amount of edge thickness as you could see every bit of the thickness of the lens blank. We dated for about 6 months, and I enjoyed every minute of our time together. Sheila really taught me a lot. She had great legs, a trim rear end and was well endowed upstairs for a now 14 year old girl. She was an excellent dancer, and I learned how to dance from her. Her dad had a stock car, and on Saturday nights we went to watch him at the races. He did quite well at the races and most weeks he ended up with a trophy and some prize money. I don’t know why Sheila eventually broke up with me, but we have stayed friends over the years, and I see Sheila and her 3 kids at least once a year.
There were a number of other girls that I dated before I met the lady who eventually became my wife. I went out with some of them because my dad suggested I should date them and others were girls that I decided I liked the looks of when I was helping them choose their new frames. They all had one thing in common though. They all had a higher degree of myopia than most of the other girls their age. Somehow or another I had gotten hooked on nearsighted ladies, and the thicker their glasses were the more interest I had in them.
After I completed high school I went on to get my bachelor’s degree. Then I took another 4 years of studying along with my 3 years residency in the ophthalmology department of the hospital to eventually become an ophthalmologist. After I had written my final exams to get my license I married my girlfriend of 7 years and then I hung my shingle up along with my father’s at his optometry practice. I was 29 years old at the time. My wife, who I had met when I was working for dad in the summer between my getting my B.A. and starting med school, had waited patiently for me to complete my education. She had actually spent 6 of the last 7 years working as a receptionist for dad, and Connie was almost like one of the family even before we were married. Like my mom, Connie was very shortsighted, and she and mom both wore glasses that had prescriptions in the low -20D range.
Dad had been 29 when I was born, and when I was 36 he decided that at the age of 65 he was old enough to retire and enjoy a few of the pleasures that he had put off over the years. We had discussed a buyout plan for me to take over the business, and I had actually been making payments on it for the last 5 years. Finally the business was mine, and I could run it the way I wanted to. Not that there was anything wrong with dad’s management, but of course I felt I could do better. I made money every year for the first couple of years, but after allowing for inflation dad had still booked a little higher revenue per year than I was doing. This was all wrong. I had medical degree, and I should have been making more money than dad had. I had not slacked off at all, and was working as many hours per week as he had over the years. I started to investigate by going over all of dad’s records. It took me the better part of a year, and by the time I was 39 I had finally discovered dad’s secret.
When a young child was brought in to see me by their parents I would do a very thorough examination of the child’s eyes – as I was trained to do. In many cases I did not prescribe a pair of glasses for the child to wear, but instead had their parents try some forms of eye exercises and vision strengthening tricks. For simple myopia I often suggested that the parents buy a pair of low powered over the counter reading glasses and have the child wear them when they were doing a lot of reading. As well, I would often suggest that the child who was showing a tendency towards myopia should spend more time outside playing in the bright sunlight – wearing the appropriate nonprescription sunglasses of course. In many cases after a year of following the prescribed course another eye exam would show that the child’s eyesight had returned to 20/20. Sometimes in a year or two the child would be back again, but I was satisfied that I had prevented a fair number of children from a life of ever increasing myopia,
In going over my dad’s old records I discovered that every child that had been examined by him had left the store wearing pair of glasses. These first glasses were generally done in a-1D prescription, which is a weak enough prescription that almost any child could wear them, even if they only had -0.50D of actual myopia. And of course the next exam generally showed a nice little increase to around -2.00D or even -2.50D. Instead of dad trying to prevent what my colleagues and I called staircase myopia my dad had promoted it. It was then that I realized that my dad must have had a fixation towards myopia. That would explain why he had married my mom, with her strong prescription. That would explain why both my sisters were fairly nearsighted, and that would also explain why I was now wearing a -5.00D prescription. I am not saying that dad went out and forced more myopia on anyone, but I am saying that anyone with the least little bit of myopia left the offices wearing a pair of glasses for the correction of myopia. Dad knew as much as I did about the progression of myopia and the tendency for most schoolchildren to develop a little schoolyard myopia. And of course this explained why dad was always finding the more myopic girls for me to date. Sure, some of the girls he asked me to date did have self-confidence issues, but I had to ask myself if I actually helped them or not?
Yes, my dad did have a secret. He was in love with myopia, and unfortunately, even though I usually did my best to prevent it in younger children, so was I.
Specs4ever
Jan 2016.
Statistics: Posted by Specs4ever — Mon Dec 19, 2016 3:08 pm