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Buddy Holly Glasses

When I was in grade school, I was convinced that wearing glasses might be the solution to my reading problem. It was a belief that my teachers reinforced constantly. They had to blame by reading problems on something. There could be no other answer. It certainly had nothing to do with their teaching methods.

Early in my first year of school optometrist came in to check everyone's eyes. It was a good service and I am sure the school got some token rebate from the optometrist for every pair of glasses sold as a result of the access a public school system had provided to him. He had ethics and was on the up and up, though. He told me that my eyes were fine and for the most part that was true. He didn't have time to give every student a thorough examination.

Even after my eyes had been certified 'fine' the teachers insisted on telling me that I might need glasses, that perhaps the test was in error. There could be no other logical reason that they could think of why I was having so many problems reading.

I insisted and persisted with bringing their suggestions home with me from school until my mother relented and took me to Springfield - which was 'the big city' to me - to see an optometrist for a comprehensive eye exam. As a result I learned that I was partially color blind to certain shades of green and gray but that otherwise, except for a slight astigmatism , my eyesight was nearly perfect. He said that in all honesty I probably could go for years without needing glasses but that at some point I might need them to read.

I was in the 8th grade before I actually got a pair of glasses. Just as the optometrist had told me, I did not need to wear them all the time but even so I did. I thought I looked cool and intelligent in them. The irony in all of it is that by the time I actually had glasses to wear I had already taught myself a work around for my dyslexia. (See other posts to this blog.)

Miss Holland, my 8th grade English teacher said that the glasses were 'quite becoming', said that I looked like Buddy Holly (I didn't even know back then who he was).

As time went on my glasses became more and more fashionable than those first black frames. My prescription had changed little over the years and in fact whenever some of my friends tried on my glasses, they could barely tell that there was any magnification in the lenses.

When I entered the Air Force, they of course checked my eyes and issued me black frame glasses which were to be worn at all formations as part of my uniform. Whether I really needed them or not, I was to wear them to all formations. Even when I was at The Defense Language Institute, I had to wear those glasses to official formations.

I had made a passing comment along the way to one of my friends that the plain black frames were perhaps a more effective means of birth control than any drug as there was little chance that any guy wearing such glasses would ever get close enough to a lady...well you get the idea. As we were Chinese linguist students, he immediately asked one of our native speaking instructors how to say birth control in Chinese. The term is Bie Yun. Since glasses in Chinese is Yan gingr, he immediately coined the phrase 'bei yun de yan gingr' meaning literally birth control glasses.

Black frame glasses ever after have been bie yun de yan gingr. There is a variant on that concept that combines the two mental associations for that type of glasses, Buddy Holly B.C.G.'s.
Look for it in an upcoming book.

E

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posted by Unknown @ 8:32 AM