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Eyeglasses were what my little childhood heart wanted most.

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

She was the first little person I had seen with eyeglasses and everybody was carrying on over her and Mrs. Beverly, too.

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

I started needing eyeglasses that very day. I squinted one eye at the blackboard. Then 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 anything for eyeglasses.

I told Mama that my eyes started hurting bad 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 rag over my eyes.

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

Mama finally decided I might need eyeglasses so she took me to see Dr. Killingsworth, just a regular doctor. He looked in my eyes with a tiny 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. I thought if I couldn’t see that I was sure to get eyeglasses. I squinted and said the big E was an “S.”

“Try again.” 

It wasn’t an M either.

Dr. Killingsworth and Mama got over in the corner and whispered. For sure, he was telling Mama I needed eyeglasses.

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’ Dr. Killingsworth 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.

Years later, I got glasses and I didn’t look as cute as I had thought I would.

Later, the eye doctor said I had cataracts.

I had not even coveted a cataract.

Then the eye doctor uttered the word “surgery.”

E-I-E-I-O!  I would have preferred Mama’s remedy.