by Tom the Hungarian
I had bought the practice I mentioned in my previous story from another optometrist. The deal, of course, included all his records. As a result, I initially had a large number of patients on my books whom I had not met personally. Gradually I got to know most of them but there were those who dropped out.
I owned the practce for some six years already when a woman calls, says she is an old patient and wants an appointment. We make an appointment and look for her records and cannot find them. I have my secretary call and ask when she had last been for an examination. The woman hums and haws and thinks and says it was a long time ago. How long ago my secretary asks. She answers that it was almost seven years. So we go to our storage room and dig out the old records and my secretary brings it to me and tells me that the pateint was twelve years old when she last came. Well, that's alright, I figure, maybe they had moved away, she is back now and remembers this office.
The day of the appointment arrives and I am looking at the young woman coming into my office with curiosity. She is a tall, big girl, with substantial breasts and a significant behind, the kind of young woman I am not necessarily indifferent to. But then what woman am I necessarily indifferent to anyway? She wears blue jeand and a white men's shirt, has rosy cheeks and attractive features and, of course, wears glasses with middling minus lenses. I look at her records and see that she wore, as a twelve year old, -4.25 for the right eye and -3.75 for the left with -0.50 and -0.75 astigmatism. I judge that her lenses are not too different so her myopia must have stabilized early. I ask her to give me her glasses, check the lenses and, to my surprise, I find that these lenses are exactly the same.
"That's interesting," - I say to her. - "Your eyes didn't seem
to have changed at all in over six years. These lenses are exactly the same
strength."
She smiles vaguely and, then, I ask when and where she last had her eyes tested.
She seems surprised at the question,
"Well, right here," - she answers, - "six years ago."
Now it is my turn to be surprised.
"You mean you have not had your eyese tested in six years?"
She nods.
"But why?" - I ask.
She blushes and after some considerable hesitation she explains mumbling and
stuttering.
"I hate to wear glasses... I knew my eyes were getting worse... and I didn't
want to have to wear thicker lenses..."
My further questions elicit the story. Shortly after he last eye test, her
mother walked out on the family leaving her in care of her father. He brought
her up mostly by himself and, when he remarried, the stepmother showed little
interest in the girl. She went to a small private school where there was no
school nurse to test the children's eyes.
"Why are you now here?"
"Because my father bought me a car as a highschool graduation present and I
can't get a drivers license my eyes are so bad."
We go through the routine and the result of the test truly amazes me. Her present prescription is a whopping -9.00 -1.00 and -8.00 and -1.50.
When I ask her how she managed with her old glasses, she tells me a long
story of cheating and deceit and decline in grade, stoppint to go to the movies
and playing tennis - all this just to avoid wearing thicker lenses. She asks me
what her prescription is.
"I tell you later," - I answer. I go with her over to the optician's
store and hand in her prescription something I rarely do personally but had done,
on occasion, when I was interested in the case. The optician asks if she wants
high index lenses but I tell het it is not worth the price difference. I also
tell the optician to deliver the glasses to me and I tell the girl to come and
see me in an hour's time when her new glasses would be ready.
She returns on time. I sit her down at my desk and put her glasses on. She
just screams in delight as she realizes how clearly she can see everything. Then
I hold up a mirror in front of her and she almost faints seeing the thickness of
her glasses.
"These are horrible!" - she screams, - "Ugly! How can I wear them?"
She does not know - I told no one that i added -1.50 to each eye knowing that a young person's accommodation can easily take care of the difference.