my first pair of specs...

Ok one more silly childhood story to bore you guys. It is the story about I got my first pair of spectacles. I was in class II, a very talkative student much to my mom’s dismay who had to hear all the complaints from my teachers. Though till now I have not been able to figure out why they complained. Talking, sometimes excessively is ok in my book, it helps us bond and also express our feelings. Anyways during that time I had this friend call Diya, lost her since then. We, two eight year olds, used to sit together and always had our heads together, giggling and chatting, much to our teacher’s exasperation. One day Diya came to school looking rather grown up and pretending to have gained whole lot of experience. When I asked her, she initially refused and put on her airs. Not to be dominated, I decided to leave her alone. Soon enough her need to share the important experience became more important than showing airs and also she was bursting to share her news.
Anyways the big secret was that since she was having headache regularly, her parents took her to see an eye specialist. The doctor had asked her to read various shapes and sizes of alphabets from far and near, quizzed her on her headache (which she confessed to me after obtaining ‘mother’ and ‘father’ promises from me, not to tell a soul, that she really did not have them, she used to pretend just to get off homework)! Anyways she was fairly able to convince the doctor, who prescribed her a pair of spectacles. So her spectacles were coming by next week!
Next week came and so did her shiny new pair of pink spectacles. Even though there were two/three other kids with spectacles, no one had turned having specs into so much of an event. She emerged, as the new queen bee of the class, during lunch break students would come up to her and ask for a chance to try on her new specs. Friends would get first preference and so on.
Not one to enjoy being left behind at anything I started to pester Diya to let me into her secret of how to go about getting a pair of specs.
The instructions given to me were very clear—pretend to have headaches and at time eye aches, not to be able to read the blackboard in class so far and so forth. Soon enough my class teacher called my mother, yet again complained that I talk excessively in class and also informed her that I am having problems reading the blackboard from three/four benches back. My mother informed her that I was complaining of headache and also at eye ache at home. Finally the golden suggestion came: maybe she showed be shown to an eye specialist. Lots of children are having eye problem now a days.
One of my aunts is an eye doctor and I was taken to her on one of the weekends. She made me sit in a high up examination chair and started all the tests. Diya had warned me about this bit. Pretend you cannot read some of them but not all of them, otherwise they will understand you are cheating. So I started. But my aunt kept coming back again and again. I valiantly tried to remember which ones I had said earlier I could not read and stick to them. Finally after an hour or so, my aunt told my parents that she cannot find any problem with my eyes really, but just in case she will give me a very minimal power specs. I need to wear it continuously and soon whatever miniscule problem is there will go. My parents dutifully took me to an optical shop where I chose a nice pair of specs.
I remember my excitement even now when the specs came; I was even wanted to wear them to bed. In class I replaced Diya and my specs got lots of appreciation from ‘not-so-lucky to have specs’ friends. But dear me I soon realized that wearing specs is not all that fun, firstly it used to hurt the area behind my ears, and then it was inconvenient while playing and frankly I got bored and had mentally moved onto some other excitement. But I had not bargained on my father. He made sure that I wear my specs regularly. Whenever I complained of it hurting, the spec and I, we were taken to the optical shop to get us adjusted to each other. I lost it, thinking good riddance. But soon another pair came, eventually many more pairs came only to be lost again and again. And regular eye check up by my enthusiastic father became part of life. Every year there would be two eye check-ups. By then my aunt had got her transfer and moved from Kolkata, so I would be taken to another doctor. This other doctor never found anything wrong with my eyes, but since this was issue by one doctor he never un- prescribed it. This went on till I was in class VIII, by then I was old enough and teenage enough to insist my eyes were perfectly fine and I did not need specs and I really did not care what the doctors said!
Even now sometimes my father asked me whether I had made up that entire headache/ eye ache story and I very staunchly refuse!