Four Eyes Teasing or Covid-19 Barrier
In 1949, when I was 11 years old, I was a student in Miss Lovejoy's class at Lafayette Grammar School in Chicago. After all these years, I still remember the day we attended an assembly and I was seated next to my good friend, Gloria. Students around me were laughing and clapping, but I couldn't see the stage, let alone the fifth and sixth graders dancing about.
"Let me have your glasses," I said to Gloria, who obliged, removing them from her face and handing them to me. Just as I was about to exclaim, "I can see, I can see," Miss Lovejoy rushed over, finger to her grim mouth and shaking her head. "Elaine," she said, "I thought more of you. No talking in assembly!"
In my mind's eyes, I see that scene, detail by detail, because I was such a good little girl and had never been reprimanded by a teacher during my time at Lafayette. Also, because after a suggested exam with an optometrist, I got my first prescription for glasses.
"Four eyes," became a title I wore in grammar school, which continued into high school where "shrimp" became its companion. I endured them all, because, well, I was still cute.
I bring that up now -- with all of the misery in placing "coke bottles" on my face -- because of a recent hopeful article in the New York Times* that included this precious paragraph, "When researchers in China were analyzing hospital data of patients with Covid-19, they noticed an odd trend: Very few of the sick patients regularly wore glasses." The authors mused, "that people who wear glasses are less likely to rub their eyes with contaminated hands."
Could it be that my childhood scene, and that odious epithet could at last be replaced by this possible good news, that my glasses with their pricey frames and lenses for far and near could ward off the deadly illness swirling somewhere around me?
The jury is still out, and surely studies continue, but for now, let's take it as a win for all of us "four eyes" that were teased in childhood.
Now at 82, my glasses are no longer a nuisance or a lure for silly boys who didn't know better. My specs are whittled down from "coke bottles" to a single layer and they serve a welcome cosmetic function: they hide the bags under my eyes.
Mayo Clinic explains this distressing puffiness as common with aging. Technically, the tissues around our eyes, including some of the muscles supporting our eyelids, weaken. And, normal fat that helps support the eyes can then move into the lower eyelids, causing the lids to appear puffy.
One eye procedure that awaits me, cataract surgery, will eliminate the need for glasses. My lovely eyes will be available for all to see, but alas, so will the bags. It appears that normal aging holds all sorts of upsides and downsides.
When I was younger, and the bags hadn't yet elected to join my face, I switched from eyeglasses to contact lenses. Dutifully, I would follow this procedure each morning: carefully remove from their plastic crib where they had bathed overnight, place one carefully on the tip of a finger, use another finger to open the eye, and then...drop the lens onto the bathroom floor where sightless, I would be on hands and knees, palming my hand around the tile. When found and inserted, I could then repeat the game for my left.
A sad side effect of contact lenses was that I still needed a pair of glasses to read. These traveled with a chain to hold them in place until required, or instead, a hunt accompanied by pleas, Where are my reading glasses? Has anyone seen my glasses?
For years I continued with contacts until the daily challenge was eliminated by the arrival of dashing frames for eyeglasses. Now I could see, enhance my face with some stylish accessory, and enjoy an extra hour -- free from the hunt -- to enjoy my morning coffee and newspaper.
Alas, my ophthalmologist will soon pronounce my eyes ripe for the popular cataract surgery. Friends who have had the procedure vow, "It's no big deal." So the cycle will launch once again: under eye concealer to disguise the bags and eyeglass readers to use and lose.
Then again, since the frames of specs are so charming and dazzling, what's the harm of donning a pair with clear lenses? Certainly "four eyes" is passé and Covid-19 remains a risk, so when the surgery is complete, I will happily slip on a phony pair. Shush.
*Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times, Sept. 16, 2020