"Drunken Children Tell the Ugliest Lies"

I have 20/20 vision.
Very exciting stuff I know.
I tell you this because the truth is I always wanted to be the type of woman who wore glasses. I'm not crazy.
I've never prayed to God for a detached retina.
What I am saying is that I always wanted to be that woman.
You know her.
Maybe you have seen her at the Whitney,
or toting a canvas bag full of fruit and bread on the train.
She's incredibly well-read, dazzling at cocktail parties, always wearing jewelery that a friend brought back from Sri Lanka, and smells of tea tree oil, jasmine, and leather bound books.
The kind of woman who keeps her hair long in her fifties and throws the whole gray frizzy lot of it up into an effortless heap with a pair of chopsticks.
I love that lady, and I always thought that the key to someday becoming her began with the glasses.
"Let's drink chrysanthemum tea and discuss Anne Sexton and then I will tell you about hitchhiking through Morocco and the bandits who almost stole my llama."
Damn.
I have to get some glasses.
As a child I envied the kids who got to wear them.
Every year I would try and throw the eye exam.
"E, G, A, D, next line, uh, B, X, Q? um R, next line, sailboat? turtle, crescent moon, 7."
Never worked once.
Our school nurse, I believe her last name may have been Ratched, may have been one hundred and eleven but she was sharp as a bear trap.
Granted I may have given her just cause to doubt my many ailments.
I hated school and was constantly looking for a reason to flee and catch a bus to New York City where I was certain my millionaire husband would be waiting on his yacht ready to sail me around the world with violinists, caviar, and fine champagne.
I watched entirely too many episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat as a child.
I may never fully recover a sense of reality.
Anyway I had a habit of crying wolf back in those childhood days, and given any moment of boredom or mediocrity I would ask to leave class, head to the infirmary and say something along the lines of "I have a terrible ache in my stomach and my scalp won't stop itching. I think I have polio."
I used to try and throw the hearing test too.
I don't know what I thought I would get out of this one.
Really cool hearing aids that all the other kids would envy?
I don't know.
All I remember is that the nurse would put these giant suction cup headphones over your ears. You know the kind?
The ones that the Williamsburg kids wear on the train to let you know that they have been listening to Modest Mouse since '96 and are therefore THAT much better than you are.
So the nurse would play these beeps in your ear and you had to raise your hand to tell her if you heard the sound in the left ear, the right ear, or not at all.
Every year I went Helen Keller deaf after twenty seconds.
And still...no cool hearing aids to show off in September.
I would stand lopsided for the scoliosis exam just begging for a back brace.
I would touch the head of every dirty kid in class just praying for the popsicle stick to leave my head hopping with lice.
And still...healthy as a freaking horse.
So why did I do all of this stuff as a kid.
A desperate plea for attention?
A longing to be different?
A yearning to make friends with the elderly?
It may have been a combination of all three.
But today I thank my higher power that I can see the stars, that I can hear the wind through the trees, and that I don't have to wash my hair with charcoal.
Still though, I may pick up some fake glasses.
And then maybe someday I could be that lady I have always dreamed of.