Boys DO Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses

If Sarah Palin has contributed in any measurable way to our society, it has been to prove that chicks in glasses are hot. Well, what a time to be a kid, eh?

My daughter finally scored the reading glasses she has wanted so badly. The trip to the eye doctor was met with the same manic enthusiasm as a school holiday. She spent a crazy amount of time selecting the the perfect pair of kid-size frames with Easy Twist technology. And where else but the optometrist can a tween try on Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Dior?

My story was the opposite - a long-term disaster. Boy-crazy at an early age, I was also precociously vain. (Looking back, maybe my parents were aware of this and bribed the doctor, because what a scary combination.) In any case, both those predispositions ran head-on into Third Grade Glasses and drama the likes of which I have only witnessed, um.....with my daughter.

No way on the highway was Loren - the short, dark & handsome boy who sat in front of me going to grow up and marry a girl with glasses! Not only could I suddenly see well, I could see into the future. He would fulfill his singular dream of becoming a long-haul truck driver and now some other girl - one who wasn't cursed with bad eyes -would win his roaming heart and wave him off each week as he took to the road. I cried myself to sleep the day we picked up those humongous brown spectacles. It was a life sentence that not even a "celebration" dinner at Red Lobster could fix.

Fast forward to the present on a late evening when I've succumbed to the irritation and traded my scratchy contacts for super-chic BCBG frames and we have an episode of late night emotional upheaval, which seems to materialize when she has reached the titration point with her diabetes. I try to remember how the perceived curse of my bad eyesight made me feel - isolated, different, not as cute - and remember that what she is dealing with is so, so much worse. I cannot imagine having to deal with something like this in the 5th grade and beyond.

Thank God she thinks glasses are a treat. (And yes, his name really was Loren and he really wanted to be a truck driver.)