The "cute, pink glasses" that almost ruined my life

A few days ago I was standing outside my home chatting with my next door neighbor about stuff. After about ten minutes she said she had to run because she had to pick up her daughter’s glasses because they were ready. Then she smiled and said “Girl they are so cute, and guess what color they are, PINK!”. She was excited, because her husband had picked out the glasses and all she knew about them was that they were pink and cute. She walked off and I kind of stood there a moment thinking because the thought of pink glasses brought back memories for me. Not the happy-go-lucky, big smiles and bubble gum kind of memories. No, the thought of pink glasses brought back Coke bottle, four eyed memories. I stood there a while longer hoping that this child was not about to come home looking like Steve Urkle’s little sister, like I had done so many years ago.

I can remember as if it were yesterday when my mom picked me out a pair of pink tinted, Coke bottle glasses. I was in the 3rd grade and Lord knows I will never in my life forget the torment I suffered at the hands of those horrific glasses. They covered most of my face and even when I wasn’t interested in something, the glasses made me look as if I were. They overpowered my tiny face, making it seem as if I had mistankenly grabbed my aunt Shirley’s glasses instead of my own. I will never forget how ugly and dangerously huge those glasses were.

So hearing the news of my next door neighors buying their child pink glasses immediately alarmed me and I prayed that they were not about to turn their child’s childhood into one of torment and embarrassment due to the fact that they liked these “cute, pink glasses”. My mother had also liked those “cute, pink glasses”. that had caused me to wish many a day for good vision so I would no longer need those ugly glasses. My mother had adored those “cute, pink glasses” that I had broken intentionally a few times, only to have them taken to the optometrist to be fixed and quickly returned to me so I wouldn’t miss a day of having them at school.

I could only hope that glasses as ugly as the ones I had been forced to wear were no longer being created and that if they were my neighbors had sense enough not to pick them.

The next morning as we were heading to school, my next door neighbor called out to me to as they were loading into the van, headed for school also. She smiled and motioned towards her daughter who had on a pair of stylish, wire framed, pink glasses. They were cute! I smiled and told her how cute they were. She said she liked them and that she even had a cute case for them.

My heart was lightened once I had seen the glasses because if that child had turned around and had on the glasses I had envisioned my heart would have sank. I would have immediately had a moment of memory relapase and seen myself with those horrible pink Coke Bottles on that almost ruined my life at the tender age of 8 years old.

Thank God that child’s parents have good taste!