Little Four Eyes

I am 55, going by Chinese year. Getting this age, I totally forgot all the troublesome and uneasiness caused by bad sight. 

 

But it absolutely was a big trouble and a shame in my life before 50.  

I still clearly remember the first week when I started elementary school many years ago back in Shanghai. The teacher found the kid in the corner of classroom, confused and absented-minded, completely had no idea about what she had said. Plus the kid had a dummy, sort of Down’s syndrome face. After school, teacher sorrowfully told mom: your kid has a retarded intelligence. I don’t think he could stay in this class. I am so sorry to inform you of this.  

 
Fortunately, Mom had a developed intelligence. She took me to an eye clinic where a doctor determined that I had severe nearsightedness and told Mom that’s the reason why I was so “dummy” in class. According to the doctor’s prescription, I had to wear -3.0 glasses, a pair of thick glasses at that low-tech age. 

 
It was the day that my nightmare started. 

 
In my childhood, physical fights among boys to compete for the position of “king” were almost an everyday activities. Wearing a pair of thick glasses made me lose my threat from appearance in the first place. In real war, the enemy could easily put me into blindness by skillfully knocking my glasses away. Very soon, I resigned from the king position that I kept for several weeks (were you ever in the king position?). I had to hide behind to play tricks to survive from the cruel war. Since then, I got a nickname “Little Four Eyes”. That means a kid with glasses but also implies “treacherous kid” in Chinese. 

 
This nickname followed me for almost half of my life. 

 
Throughout middle school, my glasses got thicker and thicker. Like other kids, I was crazy about soccer for first or second semester. Till one day, in a play, a fellow player knocked my glasses away and I had to crawl on ground to find broken lenses and frame scattered all over the playground. That was really a heavy strike to me for my dignity. However, I was tough and resilient. I turned my interest to Ping Pong soon after. I was doing ok when I played with average kids. But whenever I played against a high-skilled one, the little fast moving ball started to look blurry and fuzzy from my glasses. 

 
Passing the depressed middle school, eventually I reached the day to applying for college. Unexpectedly, I met even bigger problem to get into college. At that time, Chinese college education aimed to “cultivate the proletarian successor with good morality, intelligence and healthy physique”. I did not qualify for healthy physique because of my nearsightedness. The cut off line for admission was under -0.6 and I was about -0.9 degree, which was far away from the line. So I lost the qualification to go to college. But I did not give up.

Eventually, I managed to “sneak” into college through the “backdoor”. Nevertheless, I still had to keep my mouth shut and stay low key to avoid being reported during the school. If that happened I would be discharged forever. My behavior must be weird in these years. 

 
Years after, I started to feel that I was interested in girls. However, girls completely ignore to a boy with such a thick glasses. Fortunately, I could get limited-produced contact lenses made in China from market, although the quality of these lenses only allowed me wear for short time. I used the contacts during the classes only. One occasion, I saw a pretty girl in the college dining hall. In order to make me look great, I ran back to my dorm to quickly put on my contact lenses and darted back to the dining hall. But the girl had left, leaving a beautiful back to me. 

Such thing happened very often during these years. It was so discouraging. 

 
Finally, I caught a girl and married her later but not that one I tried to pursue in the college dining hall.  

 
When I was thirty and forty something, and had a lot of social activities, I still paid much attention to my appearance. I wore contact lens most of the day time. Although, most of time I forgot I had something artificial inside my eye ball, it did remind me from time to time whenever things around got quiet and I stayed lonely. 

 
However, after my 50th birthday, the issue did not matter too much anymore. And traditional glasses have been getting thinner and prettier. The glasses did not harm me as much as before from appearance. Some friends advised me to do lasik surgery and I had a consultation for that. The conclusion was my case was too severe to be an indicator for that surgery. I have not thought about it since then. 

 
If my writing teacher did not give such assignment titled my physical trait, I would never confess these embarrassing secrets. It’s really a hard job but I eventually overcame myself.  

 
When I finally wrote all these stories down, I felt so relieved.