Personal Narrative

                          Personal Narrative









         Throughout my life many moments have changed me, some for the better but also some for the worse. To me the most profound moment would be when I got glasses, though some of the details are as fogged from my memory as my vision once was, I can still recall key pieces of the event.

         It was second grade and I had just moved to a new school not knowing anyone and being very afraid to talk to complete strangers I stayed contempt with speaking as little as possible, almost the human form of a church mouse. Over the course of time however I came to befriend people I sat near, enjoying friendships that would last quite a while many of which have held firm to this day. My dad came one day to help the teacher with papers and just to see me, he sat in the back of the room during class like a towering guard. I was asked by the teacher to answer a question on the board, I looked up but couldn’t make out the question, so I sat in silence awkwardly with a blank stare on my face. “Chase,” the teacher said as I consumed more of her time, yet I didn’t know the question still therefore no words spilled from my lips, like a blocked waterfall, I sat quiet but embarrassed as I felt the stares of twenty pairs of eyes beam at me but I could not see them in the act.

         “Can I go up to the board,” I asked in a squeaky voice riddled with nervous tension. The teacher nodded, I could make out her heads figure in my world of haze that I thought was normal. Beginning the walk to the board felt like an incredible burden as those same stares still pierced me like daggers in the back. Every step was like nails to my feet as shame overcame me. The question became clear on the board not so pristine but I could still read it, I uttered the answer and quickly scurried back to my seat. Escaping the ridicule, escaping the stares of torment, escaping my shame.

         My dad had seen the whole occurrence of the event and as soon as we made it home he told my mom that I had trouble seeing. Trouble seeing the words echoed through my head like the ringing of a bell, and I thought long and hard on this perceived notion about my vision. Could my site really be obscured? Could I be so unknowing of my own body? Could I really be such a fool to think that everybody saw the world in blurs and blobs as I did?

         I was different from everyone else, I knew that as my mom took me to the eye doctor. A knot in my stomach kept me unsettled and nervous. The eye doctor was foreign to me, I had no pre-conceived notion of what he might look like, if he was even a he, or if this was no big deal like my parents had told me, I just knew in my gut whoever this “eye doctor” was they were going to perform torturous acts on my eyes and most likely hurt me in ways I didn’t want to imagine.

         We entered a building through a glass door that let the sunlight dance in its glory in a show of sparkles. Staying half a step behind my mom we crossed a large room, the carpet was hard and cheap like that in the school, my mom talked to a pudgy stout women sitting behind a cracking wooden desk faded by many years. Before I knew it a tall skinny man walked out from behind a door he was smiling exposing the pearl like teeth  that lined his mouth so perfectly, he wore similar clothes to doctors I had seen at hospitals and other such places. I thought to myself “this must be him, he’s not as bad as I thought but it could all be a rouse to put me in a false sense of security,” after only moments of his first appearance I was forced to follow the man behind the door he had come from.

         Once passed this door we were in a whole other room that was dimly lit, the lighting in the room reminded me of a sunset with a strange orange light cascading the walls. After a while I was put through tests the likes of which I had never encountered and knew nothing of, what  was good or bad, or even if I was doing them right, I just did as the man told me. He wasn’t as bad as I had built him up to be in my mind which put me at ease and released the knot in my stomach that had been pestering me.

         After completing the tests the man lead me back out to the first room to a large window that I looked out and saw nothing of interest, then he gave me a small glass lens that he called my “prescription,” I held it with hesitation and eyeballed the glass thoroughly. It was as smooth if not smoother than my cheek and seemed as light as a feather. Bringing it up to my eye I looked back out the window and was amazed at the new sights the clarity of the world the magnificence that I had never known before, it was like seeing the world for the first time. I was truly in awe and it showed on my face with an agate jaw widely open eyes trying to take in and grasp the reality of the new world around me.

         My mom stood by me and I pointed out all the new buildings and signs I saw, all the dogs and cats, all the sparkling cars. She laughed and went back to the desk lady where she was given a pair of glasses meant for me. I took them eagerly not even a moment of hesitation to put them on. I was a new person in a new world.

         When I got glasses was clearly a moment that changed my life for the better. I had a new grasp on life I had a new respect for the things around me and I could actually function in a classroom without being embarrassed.