Gwendy's Button Box

5

In June of 1975, Gwendy stops wearing her glasses.

Mrs. Peterson remonstrates with her. “I know that girls your age start thinking about boys, I haven’t forgotten everything about being thirteen, but that saying about how boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses is just—don’t tell your father I said this—full of shit. The truth, Gwennie, is that boys will make passes at anything in a skirt, and you’re far too young for that business, anyway.”

“Mom, how old were you when you first made out with a boy?”

“Sixteen,” says Mrs. Peterson without hesitation. She was actually eleven, kissing with Georgie McClelland, up in the loft of the McClelland barn. Oh, they smacked up a storm. “And listen, Gwennie, you’re a very pretty girl, with or without glasses.”

“It’s nice of you to say so,” Gwendy tells her, “but I really see better without them. They hurt my eyes now.”

Mrs. Peterson doesn’t believe it, so she takes her daughter to Dr. Emerson, the Rock’s resident optician. He doesn’t believe it, either… at least until Gwendy hands him her glasses and then reads the eye chart all the way to the bottom.

“Well I’ll be darned,” he says. “I’ve heard of this, but it’s extremely rare. You must have been eating a lot of carrots, Gwendy.”

“I guess that must be it,” she smiles, thinking, It’s chocolates I’ve been eating. Magic chocolate animals, and they never run out.