The radio-evangelist, the Rev. Warren Walker, said that illness is caused from evil doings.

I don’t guess that near-sightedness or far sightedness, whichever, is an illness but I do believe that I’m getting paid back for my evil doings as a child.

I made up things. Even told stories to my mama and the town doctor, Doctor Killingsworth. And because of it, I have to have eyeglasses to see anything that’s right up on me.

And to add insult to injury, I can’t keep up with my eyeglasses. I’ve lost them so much that nobody will help me look for them.

I work myself up into such a frenzy looking for my eyeglasses that I have to take an aspirin and put a cold, wet cloth on my head. Lying there it all comes back to me as to why I’m being punished that way.

A pair of eyeglasses was the one thing that my little childhood heart wanted most.

The day a little girl came into Mrs. Beverly’s classroom wearing a pair of orange-rimmed eyeglasses was the day that I learned the real meaning of covet.

She was the first little person I had seen with eyeglasses on and everybody was carrying on over her and Mrs. Beverly said how nice she looked in her glasses.

“Now you can see the blackboard and everything else so plain and clear,” Mrs. Beverly said and patted her on the head.

Those eyeglasses gave her X-ray power just like Superman. I had always wanted X-ray power and I wanted me some eyeglasses.

I started needing eyeglasses that very day. I squinted one eye at the blackboard. Then I squinted two eyes but Mrs. Beverly didn’t notice. When I got home, I told Mama that my eyes hurt. Now, I was taking a real chance on that because Mama’s remedy for any ailment from a scraped knee to a ruptured appendix was an enema. But I would do just about anything for eyeglasses.

“No, I didn’t get anything in my eyes,” I told Mama.” They just hurt and my head did, too. They started hurting when I was trying to see the blackboard – my eyes and my head.”

Mama told me to lie down and she put a wet bath cloth over my eyes.

For the next two days, we went through the same thing. I kind of liked lying there with a wet cloth over my eyes. In my mind’s eye, I could picture myself with my new orange-rimmed eyeglasses on.

Mama finally decided I might need eyeglasses so she took me to see Dr. Killingsworth. He looked in my eyes with a little light and had me to look this way and that way and up and down. Then he told me to cover one eye with a piece of cardboard and read the letters on the chart.

The first one was the biggest “E” I had ever seen and I called it every letter in the alphabet except an “E.”

Dr. Killingsworth motioned Mama over in the corner, and they whispered so I couldn’t hear them. He was telling Mama I needed eyeglasses. I was sure of that.

He came back and rubbed some stuff on my eyelids.

“Now, if this ointment doesn’t help, bring her back on Monday, and I’ll give her a shot that should clear her eyes up,” that mean ol’ doctor said.

Well, it would be a month of Sundays before I went back to him. I wasn’t about to get a shot when what I needed was eyeglasses.

Now, I have to wear glasses to read, to see the food on my plate and to tie my shoes. And, I just don’t look as cute in them as I thought I would.