Author's Note: In the essay The Queens of Myopia near the start of the story I mentioned my neighbor, whom I gave the fictitious name of Mary for the purposes of that essay. She was considered to be one of - if not the - prettiest girls in our little town, and this is her glasses story to the best of my remembrances. Again, this was the mid-50's when my own optical experience was limited so the Rx's mentioned are based on memory and applying what I've learned since then.

Mary lived two houses away from me in the small midwestern town where we lived a very idyllic existence. She was slight of build nearing the point of frailty, with a peaches and cream complexion and white blond hair that she always kept in a pony tail. Her most striking feature was her cornflower blue eyes that accented her waifish features.

Of course all of the boys in town coveted her, but with her being an older woman (one year) and a popular cheerleader type she was out of my reach. She was spoken for by one of the upperclassmen by the time she hit high school, so alas, we were destined only to be friends and neighbors.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade for me was a baseball summer, we had a championship Babe Ruth League team on which I was the starting third baseman. Of course the team was a point of pride for the little community and the games were well attended, especially by the town girls.

One day, just prior to the start of the game, I looked up at the path leading down to the field, and saw Mary walking through the gate to the ball park flanked by Janey and Geri. Even though it was hundred or so yards away, I could see that Mary was wearing brown cat eye glasses! This was too good to be true I thought, and sure enough, she whipped them off immediately on entering the park and handed them back to their rightful owner, Janey.

My concentration was shattered, at least as far as baseball went and at least for the first couple of innings. The home bleachers were right behind our bench (we didn't have a dugout) and that is where the group of girls sat. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't take a line drive to the side of my head, because from my fielding position at third if I looked to my right there they were.

Finally, when our team was at bat in about the third inning, I ventured a peek over my shoulder just in time to see Janey hand her glasses to Mary, who slowly put them on by brushing the temple tips up and along her flawless cheeks, nestling them in place over her ears and on her turned up nose.

She smiled, obviously relishing how she was seeing the green grass, blue skies, and uniformed young men around the diamond. It was all I could do to turn my attention back to the game, but the coach would have had me horse-whipped if I'd been caught looking anywhere but on the field.

This piece of information went into my memory banks, only to surface again the following spring on a warm May day just before school was out. The only school building in town, a three story brick structure housing kindergarten through senior high, was only a block from our houses and we often went there to shoot baskets at a hoop on the back side of the schoolhouse. It was there, on that Saturday afternoon, that I learned a lot about how girls came to wear glasses, at least in our little town.

As I walked from my house to the 'downtown', a total of about 3 blocks (it was a very small town) through the school's playground, the path took me next to the school building. Mary was attempting to throw a basketball through the hoop from about 10 feet away, and squinting at the basket.

I'd noticed she squinted a lot lately. I veered in her direction, stopped and said hello, and asked her some inane question like "what did you do today?" Her response was direct and surprising. "We just got back from the eye doctor's office and I had my eyes tested. I have to wear glasses. I'm very nearsighted."

Needless to say, my sensory system failed from overload at the idea of the town beauty in glasses, and I was reduced to stammering something along the lines of "oh, that's nice" or "oh, why" or "oh, what caused to you get your eyes tested", etc. Again, she answered "Mr. Hooper, our homeroom teacher, said I was squinting all the time and holding books right up to my nose, and told my parents. And he was right, I do need glasses... badly."

Again reduced to a mouth full of marbles, I bid her adieu and went on my way, barely able to navigate across the open playground to whatever my original destination was, in all probability the local drug store which had a soda fountain. After a double phospate or so, my mind was back to some semblance of normal and I began plotting how I would get her one on one to discuss in detail her experience once she became bespectacled.

As there were no such things at that time as one-hour opticals, and glasses were made of glass, it would be a week before she got them and by then school was out. So, even though we were close neighbors, it would be some time before I got to see her wearing her new acquisition.

My dream scenario had us walking from home to downtown, through the schoolyard, and stopping near the basketball court where I could bombard her with several carefully scripted questions. And my mind was racing as to how they would look. She said she was very nearsighted, so I assumed they would be well past the -.75's of Janey I had seen her wearing a year earlier and what the teacher had said was true.

She squinted almost continually and held reading materials inches from the tip of her nose. Would they be dark cat eyes or the clear blonde plastic that was also popular at the time? Could I phrase the questions in such a way that she would actually take them off and let me hold them and even look through them? The closest metaphor to describe my thought processes was a train wreck.

Inevitably, but of course not soon enough, the day came. She and her cousin came walking in the direction of our house, and cursing the bad luck that brought her cousin to the scene, I met them at the edge of our yard. Being the first time I'd seen her since she got them, it was not out of place to comment on them.

I told her how nice she looked, and it was true. The frames were somewhat angular, with the bottoms of the eye-wires a sparkling clear zyl and the brow lines and temples a gorgeous sky blue that accentuated her deep blue eyes. The wide temple tips were clearly visible behind her shell pink ears with her ponytail pulling her hair back.

But wait... something was amiss. It appeared that the lenses had no power in them! She accepted the compliment, said that she loved wearing them as she could see so clearly and that the whole world was brighter, and they walked on talking the talk of teenage girls as I stood in their wake somewhat unfulfilled.

From that time on, I never saw Mary without her glasses except when she took them off to clean them, or on a few occasions, at my request. She was in our yard from time to time, and on the first of those occasions I asked her if they were strong and she gave the absolutely perfect response "Oh yes, everything is blurry without them. Would you like to try them on?"

Skyrockets at night, afternoon delight! Would I? With trembling hand, I accepted them from her and held them up to my own eyes. What had been a misty light green foliage wrapped day in our garden suddenly became bright and shiny.

At that moment I learned a valuable lesson for future reference: a small amount of minus, under the right conditions, will enhance the vision of even those with supposedly 20/20 vision. And the second revelation was that she wasn't very nearsighted as she imagined herself to be, but was only slightly myopic, probably only a -.50. And the third, that even a very small correction can seem large to some people.

Nonetheless, those gorgeous glasses became a fixture, her trademark. She apparently enjoyed wearing them for the clear vision they afforded and had no inhibitions about having them on as evidenced by the fact that she is seen in them in all of her school pictures in our old high school annuals. She also took them seriously.

On one occasion, when they weren't even the topic of conversation, she said "I've decided to change the way I push them up when they slip down on my nose. I'm going to do it like this" she said as she brought her thumb and index figure to the hinge area "or like this" as she touched the hinge area on both sides with her index and middle fingers. "This" she went on as she pushed them up the bridge of her nose with one index finger "is not ladylike." And above all things, Mary was a petite, feminine, lovely lady.

As time went on, she graduated, got married to one of her sports star classmates, and moved away. One year later I also graduated and went away to college, but unlike Janey and Geri our paths crossed in later years. It wasn't often, but on at least three occasions over the last 40 years I bumped into her on visits back to West Podunk.

And, much to my surprise, after I saw her walk down the aisle at commencement and leave our little cloister I never again saw her wearing glasses. Over the 4 years of high school she never got different ones so obviously did not become more myopic, and at some point decided that a small correction wasn't worth wearing. Presumably with the aging process that affects us all presbyopia later on became a factor, and hidden in the recesses of her purse there lurks a pair of plus readers.

But time cannot erase from my memory the saga that began with her wearing Janey's at a small time baseball game and ended with the blue and clear -.50's that did not detract from, but rather enhanced, a truly natural beauty.