Per’s Glasses
There were twenty-eight children in my third-grade class, roughly half of them boys and the other half, obviously, girls.
All but two of those twenty-eight, well, twenty-seven not counting me, were taller than I was. Only Per and Christer were my height — we checked several times and found each time that we were precisely as tall (or as short, rather).
Even the shortest girl was taller. Embarrassing. Very.
My mother, and on occasion my grandmother, kept telling me that I would shoot up like a bamboo once I reached my teens and not to worry about anything. Just a late bloomer, that’s all — and by a motherly logic I have yet to crack, I was told (and more than once) that growing taller later in life (as in your teens) made for higher intelligence. I lapped that up, of course. Nice crutch.
As it happened, by the time I left home (at sixteen) I was just as tall as the next guy, so kudos to Mom and Grandma. Small price to pay for such superior intelligence.
Back in third grade: I was a timid soul. I had never been in a fist fight and could not even imagine ever being in one. This, by the way, holds true to this very day (and I’m seventy-one now, and I still have never been in a fist fight).
Anyway, back to third grade: Christer was pretty timid as well — though he was an awesome cross-country skier, fast and with ridiculous endurance, ever seemed to tire. He won pretty much every ski race, and we raced a lot in winter; lots of snow about, not much else to do apparently — well, hockey, but that’s another story.
Per, on the other hand, was the very opposite of timid.
He was made of steel.
I found it hard at the time to account for this. Standing side by side there was no telling (say, in our class photos) that I was the pushee-over and he was the pusher-over. Later I came to learn that he was put to work on his father’s farm shortly after he learned how to walk and much of the labor on a farm does build muscle and endurance and a body of steel.
Makes sense.
Those days, I often wished that I could be Per; or at least endowed with Per’s amazing body (and courage) (and “I’m not taking any shit from anybody”).
I brought my troubles to Minta’s door once or twice but she was not much help; her advice could easily be summarized as “Get over it.” Though this particular “it” was something I had a hard time getting over.
Then one day in class, the solution sort of walked in and sat down next to me. I was watching Per up by the blackboard, he was writing something. Spelling something out, chalky letter by chalky letter. Chalk in his right hand, tongue between teeth, while his left hand kept pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose from where they (replicating Sisyphus’ boulder) would immediately slide down to then be pushed up again, ad infinitum.
Glasses!
Per wore glasses.
Yes, granted, I would not acquire Per’s body, but I sure as anything could become at least partly Per if I, too, wore glasses. Brilliant.
Here’s the thing though. In third grade, I had perfect vision. But why would I let that stand in the way of becoming partly Per? Courageous. A pusher-over. So I lied. Told my mom (poor Lisbet), that I had trouble seeing the blackboard at school and I definitely needed glasses.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know how she took my word for that, but she did and a week later we had an appointment with the eye doctor who examined and tested and tried to figure out what kind of prescription I’d need. And, looking back, I’m surprised that he settled on a prescription at all for I kept lying, saying I could not see what I in fact I saw, clear as day.
In the end he settled for what this sham examination called for: a ridiculously improper prescription. I would get my glasses.
Per problem solved.
Could hardly wait.
A week later, we picked them up. Frames identical to Per’s (I had insisted, of course). I tried them, and, oh, Jesus, I could hardly see anything. The prescription was for farsightedness, so the lenses were of the convex, magnifying persuasion, blurring everything in sight (pun intended).
But who cares? I had glasses, and I wore them to school the following day, feeling my way gingerly about, not seeing much of anything on the blackboard. I had to take them off to make out what the teacher had written and then asked me to read.
“I didn’t know you needed glasses,” said Ingrid, our teacher.
I had no answer to that. Just nodded.
A little later, “If you need glasses,” she wondered, “why are do you keep taking them off?”
No answer to that either.
I had the feeling that I had made one of the stupidest mistakes ever, for not only did I not become Per, I didn’t even vaguely feel like Per, on top of which I couldn’t see.
Looking back from this seventy-one years old vantage point, I don’t remember how long I forced myself to wear the darn things in public (around my parents, et al.) but I also know that a couple of months or so later I had stashed them in the back of my bureau drawer, never to be worn again.
Mom, much to her credit, never brought my non-wearing of these glasses up; God knows what she thought.
Minta could not keep from laughing — which, of course, was no more than what I deserved.
Two years later I did need glasses, the correct prescription. Still do.
Every now and then I wonder if I screwed my eyes up by wearing the wrong prescription for a month or so, but then I recall that I didn’t actually wear them that much, not enough — I think — to do lasting damage.
Or perhaps just enough.
One of life’s mysteries, that.
© Wolfstuff
