I was terrible at math, or as we called it in the sixties,
arithmetic. That is, I thought I was until about the fifth grade. Then, I
realized I couldn't see the chalkboard without squinting. My seat was
always on the back row. That's ironic now because I'm only five feet
tall. But I hit that towering height early and was taller than many of
my classmates.
Mama and Daddy finally took me to the eye doctor
after one of those school vision tests showed I was nearsighted. No
wonder I couldn't do arithmetic. I was happy to see better with my new
glasses, but I hated those things. I wanted wire rims like the groovy
kids. But Mama thought those were for hippies. I wasn't allowed to wear
hippy things, so I was stuck with square brown plastic frames. They
definitely weren't groovy. I only wore them when I had to.
Mercifully,
those rims finally broke. But Mama still held her ground on the hippy
look and insisted on getting those same frames fixed. So off we went to
Eckerd's drugstore, where they once had an eyeglass section.
What
she didn't know was that I had found Daddy's old glasses, Harry
Truman-style wire rims, pushed back in a dresser drawer. They were
perfect and they were groovy. Daddy never missed them. I only wore the
hated brown frames around Mama.
Feeling pretty smug, I sat on one
of those swiveling bar stools at the drugstore while we waited for the
repair. I pushed my luck when I stuck my legs out and started spinning
around like a kid on a wound-up swing. Mama told me more than once to
stop and act my age. I was in college by then. But I ignored her. That
was a mistake.
I thought she had decided to leave me alone. I was
home for Christmas, after all. But I was being undignified in public and
that trumped Christmas visits.
There I sat, still spinning away
when the girl at the counter said my glasses were ready. I didn't care.
Daddy's wire rims were safely tucked away in my coat pocket.
Mama
ruled. She didn't even give me a glance as she walked over to pay the
bill. I grinned like a cheeky five-year-old until Mama said sadly, but
loudly, "We're so glad we were able to get our daughter out for the
holidays."
I stopped spinning. Mama sucked all the smugness right
out of me and wore it like a trophy. She headed to the door, smiling
sweetly. "Come along now, honey," she said.
Groovy had left the building.
Freelance writer and educator Jean Sanders Shumaker is a native
Tarheel, living under Carolina blue skies and the towering Rocky
Mountains.
