Author's note: some time ago, in one of the old Eye Scene forums, I'd mentioned briefly the profound influence and educational experience I'd received from my very favorite GWG's from my home town, and promised to write this essay. It is true to the best of my memory (remember, this was the mid-5O's) and the Rx's mentioned are very approximate, as of course my optical experience was in a fledgling state, so therefore they are based on applying the knowledge I've gained to my remembrances.

Geri must have been away that summer, because we didn't see her at all. And believe me, in a town that size if she'd been there we'd have seen her. Janey was growing like a weed (she eventually reached about 5'10") and was undergoing an adolescent growth spurt that probably contributed to her increasing nearsightedness. After school started that fall, she had another eye exam and showed up just before Halloween with a new pair that probably were around -2.50.

Styling in eyeglasses still hadn't taken any quantum leaps forward (although at the time we thought they had) and especially in small town Iowa options were limited. Her new ones were clear zyl, with the temples and the area over her eyebrows being enameled in a rich chocolate brown. The bridge was clear and the shape was a slightly larger and slightly upswept oval, all in all an attractive combination. What struck me the most were the temple tips, which were very wide at the bottom and when I put them on for the first time, very comfortable. Because of her size, Janey's frames fit me as I hadn't had a growth spurt yet and she and I were about the same size. This was the first time I had to really accommodate due to a higher minus lens and did not wear them for very long at a time. I do remember one evening right after she got them that we walked together in the park and I wore those and her scarf, our joke was that for a Halloween costume I would dress as her. She liked those frames, and by the following spring she needed another jump in her prescription, up to around a -3.50 and used the same ones.

Being a caring and responsible person Janey was a greatly sought after babysitter. One day that summer, she walked to my house with one of her young charges, about a seven year old little girl. I saw them coming and walked to the front lawn to meet them, and noticed the little girl was wearing glasses. As they approached further, I could see that they were indeed Janey's, and both the little girl and her sitter were smiling. Janey said "look, she loves to wear my glasses" and a conversation ensued. It turns out that they were playing around earlier and when the youngster tried them on she was delighted at her whole new world. Both Janey and I thought that maybe she just wanted to wear them for play, but she insisted that she could see everything so much better with them on. Needless to say, before very long the little girl was proudly and happily wearing some of her own, in at least a -5.00.

By the end of the summer I had a driver's license, and as my family was in the auto business I always had wheels of some kind. This led to the dating scene, and of course, the girls were always prettier in a different town. But, Geri and Janey were still my friends. That fall, some youth group had a hayride, and I wound up next to Geri under a gorgeous harvest moon. We actually cuddled, and talked about things other than glasses, and over the next couple of years went on some dates but our relationship proved largely to be platonic. All three of us played in the high school band and all three of us played basketball which bonded our friendships even further.

Geri worked at a small snack bar/cafe that was a teen hangout, and one evening I stopped in to see her when no one else was around and lo and behold she had lovely new glasses. They were a smaller oval with a little upsweep at the temples, light brown, and with dark brown and white diagonal enamel "slashes" for decoration on each temple and at the top corners of the frame front. They were definitely stronger as they were the first change she'd had in three years, up to a -4.00, and of course she was ecstatic at how much better she could see. They really looked great on her and I told her so, adding that she looked much better with them than without them. She smiled, sighed, and said "yes, I guess Janey and I are just glasses fans". Those were her identical words, and they have stayed in my memory for nearly 40 years.

Interestingly, while these two were in fact "glasses fans", they had two different styles of wearing them even though they now had approximately the same correction. For Geri, they were the first thing she put on in the morning and the last thing she took off at night and wore them on all occasions. She truly liked wearing them, probably because she liked how she saw the world through them and even though she was down right cute vanity was not an issue. With Janey, vanity was also not an issue and she also liked wearing them, but for some reason she was definitely a part time wearer. Perhaps it was because she didn't mind the reduced acuity, or maybe she even enjoyed the soft fuzzy world of myopia. Of course when she had a distance task she had to wear them to function, but the rest of the time they would be lying on her desk, in her pocket, or even on someone else's face!

Basketball was a prime example. Iowa had an archaic format for girls, three guards and three forwards. They played half court, neither were allowed to cross the center line into the other court, so the guard's only tasks were to keep the other team's forwards from scoring, to rebound, and to get the ball to the other end so their teammates could score. Sharp distance vision wasn't a necessity. Geri and Janey were both guards, and very good ones. Janey, being tall, played post guard and left her glasses in the locker room or on the bench.

Geri, a very scrappy 5'2" and about 100 lbs, was constantly in physical motion, guarding her player and fighting for the ball. Yet, she never was without hers and miraculously, never broke them. The girls played the first game, showered quickly, and by the time we'd finished our warmups and were ready to start, Geri would be up playing in the pep band, with glasses, and Janey would be in her cheerleader uniform with or without them, depending on if she remembered to put them on. When we played on the road both teams took one bus, and inevitably I'd have the good fortune to share the ride home with one of the two.

These wonderfully innocent years went by all too quickly, and I graduated and headed off to college. But the last couple of weeks of summer provided sort of a grand finale, and an exclamation point to our good times. I'd said goodbye to Geri as she again was gone for the summer, but Janey worked as a car hop at the local root beer stand. One still, quiet summer evening she and I were the only ones in the gravel parking lot at the tiny stand, and she came and sat with me in the car. It was a perfect chance for both of us to reminisce about many things, and of course the conversation eventually turned to glasses.

With very little prompting, she related most of her side of needing and getting glasses, the change in prescriptions, and the different frames. By now, she was wearing full blown cat-eyes, black 1958 models, which looked stunning on her. I asked her about the details of her most recent eye exam, and she told the whole story, using the odometer for a near point example and the menu painted on the side of the building for a far point example. She read them both with and without her glasses, and very vividly painted the "which is better, one or two" phoropter scene. Nuclear fission had nothing on my 17 year old hormones. It wasn't the heat and humidity of an August night in southwestern Iowa that drove me to the showers that particular evening.

If this were a made-up story, at this point the strand would take the three of us to only a temporary parting of the ways, beginning separate odysseys that eventually brought us together again, if not permanently at least temporarily for class reunions, holidays, or the like. Or, maybe even it would include a romantic ending, such as a final consummation of relationship that transcends the platonic and segues into a life partnership for myself and one of them. But unfortunately, this is real life and none of those scenarios have occurred or are likely to occur.

The term "Queens Of Myopia" was coined strictly to give this piece a title, but it seems highly appropriate to me. In my memories, Geri and Janey are royalty, and of course, myopic. In terms of glasses, they were role models to be envied. They came, they didn't see, and they corrected. They wore their glasses proudly, with a flair, and with absolutely no regrets nor apologies. And, they shared their experience with themselves, with me with many other up until then latent myopes. Now, vicariously, they are sharing them with all of you.

I left that little town and have barely glanced back over my shoulder. My family was older and they are all deceased, save a handful of distant cousins. Geri and Janey are not the only ones I've lost contact with, of course, but they are the ones I think about most often. A few years ago, on a brief visit, I did talk to Janey's mom who told me she was happily married and teaching elementary school in a small town not far away. One of my shirt tail relatives informed me that Geri had married and moved to the city but was separated from her husband, and showed me a ragged, poor quality newspaper clipping with a barely legible photo of her visiting her mother in a local nursing home. As bad as the photo was, I could tell she was still wearing glasses.

As for me, I moved two states away but recently married again and have returned to within a few hundred miles of them. The odds of seeing them again are akin to those of winning the lottery, but do you know what? In some ways, spending even an hour with them again would be nearly as satisfying. On those rare moments of contemplation available in my hectic life, I wonder if they would be surprised at the forks in my trail through life, particularly the one that took me to becoming a board certified optician. More important, I wonder if they ever let their minds wander back to our salad days and those magic moments we shared. And I wonder if they cruise the Internet for glasses sites. One thing they most certainly would agree with, though, is that time and distance may separate us, but true friendship will last forever.

But still, I wonder...