Four Eyes

Photo by Quincy Follweiler

Fatso was a math bully. He hollered the flashcard answer before Anita could open her mouth. She plopped down at her desk, defeated, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Fatso stepped forward and laughed, calling her stupid.

Nobody liked Fatso. He always won “Around The World” and was mean about it. Playing math games was no longer fun unless he was absent.

One afternoon, Mom bought me a deck of flashcards.

“I want you to practice your math facts everyday, and I’ll quiz you on Thursdays,” she said.

I wondered if practicing every day would help me beat Fatso. But when Mom tested me on Thursdays, I often blanked on problems like three plus five. Even though I knew the answer, her presence made me so nervous that I made careless mistakes. Then she'd get mad, I'd start crying, and before I knew it, she was out on the patio smoking another cigarette.

I knew my math facts; it was just that Mom didn’t help. 

I wanted to win "Around the World" just one time and make Fatso sit down in defeat. If I succeeded, the whole class would point and laugh at him, just like he did to us. Then, if I had the courage, I'd show him my middle finger when the teacher wasn't looking.

“Children, put your math books away and fold your hands on your desks,” Teacher said. When the room was silent, she took her box of flashcards out of her desk drawer and shuffled them like a deck of cards. Fatso wiggled like a worm on a hot sidewalk. He couldn’t wait to dominate “Around The World.”

Before Teacher turned the flashcard all the way around, Fatso shouted, “Twelve!”

She told him to stop yelling; it was just a math game.

One by one, Fatso moved up my row until he stood next to the boy behind me.

“Eighteen!” he yelled.

We all jumped out of our skin. 

Now he was next to my desk, bumping me with his foot. 

I stood up and adjusted my lime green and white polka-dot dress. Grandma had sewn it for my birthday two years ago, but I’d grown taller, and now it felt too short. However, Mom insisted that I wear it and promised to let down the hem for next time.

Don’t know why I asked my Teacher to say the flashcard aloud, but I did. Her flashcards always looked a little fuzzy to me. When she said eight plus six, I yelled, “Fourteen” before Fatso knew what happened to him. 

He barely fit at my desk. 

Standing proud, I stepped forward, next to the skinny kid’s desk.

Teacher looked at me funny. We locked eyes, and she nodded. Again, she said the flashcard aloud, and I snapped the answer. 

Everyone clapped except Fatso. 

I went around the world and back again that day, winning every challenge until the recess bell rang. I was a hero and a celebrity on the playground at lunch that day.

After school, Teacher gave me a sealed envelope to take home to Mom. I wasn’t sure about that envelope. Later that night, Mom said Teacher wrote about me winning Around The World and that I might need glasses and to get my eyes checked as soon as possible. 

I didn’t know I had terrible eyes until she pointed it out. 

Mom said there was nothing to worry about. Everyone in the family wore eyeglasses, even Brother. 

“What’s the eye doctor going to do to me?” I asked Brother. That was a mistake.

“He’s going to tie you down, stick a needle in the middle of your eyeball and suck out all the fluid!” And then he laughed like a mad scientist until Mom told him to knock it off.

I didn’t want to go to the eye doctor after that.

Mom picked me up after school and took me to the Valley Plaza. We rode the escalator to the basement of Sears to the Optometry Department to get my eyes examined. 

Brother lied. Optometrists don’t poke your eye out, and mine was friendly. We played a game where he showed me the letter “E” upside down and backward and asked me to point which way it opened. 

I had difficulty reading tiny letters at a distance and guessed a lot, but he didn’t get mad at me for getting letters wrong. He let me look through a giant eye machine while he clicked lenses back and forth until the tiniest of letters on the bottom row cleared and I got every letter right.

Mom picked out my glasses—white mother-of-pearl cat-eyes. I saw some lovely pairs, but Mom didn’t like them. She said they were too flashy for a girl my age.

The day my new glasses were ready at Sears, Mom picked me up from school again. I couldn’t wait to ride the escalator.

I kicked my legs back and forth under the chair while Mom talked to the Optometrist. I smelled hot, buttered popcorn from the Sears candy kiosk nearby. 

The Optometrist sat down next to me, crossing his legs. He wiped my new cat-eye glasses in a soft cloth and told me I was nearsighted and had football-shaped eyes. 

It didn’t make sense that I was nearsighted. My eye-problem was I couldn’t see far, but I agreed anyway. 

He put my glasses on my face, fiddled with the ear parts, then asked how they felt. "I want you to look at that sign across the store and read it for me," he said.

I'd never noticed the sign before, but for the first time, I saw it and read it easily. The letters were a crisp black against a white background. After that, I read all the other signs I'd never seen in the housewares department. But when I looked down at the floor, it felt like I was wearing circus stilts. The Optometrist assured me I'd get used to it.

The best thing about my new glasses happened when I got home to Happy Acres. I looked up at the Mulberry tree in my yard, and for the first time, I could see the individual leaves, even a Robin sitting on her nest. I'd always seen that Mulberry tree as an enormous green blob until I got close to it.

I took my red Hoppity Hop out of the shed and bounced over to Penny and Billy's trailer to show off my new glasses. They didn't seem impressed, probably because I wouldn't let them try them on. I felt ten feet tall and more grown-up than I had the day before.

Sometimes, kids on the playground called me four eyes. I didn't mind. I always yelled, "Everyone knows four eyes see better than two!"