Healthy Eyes, Sad Heart

This is a complicated tale. The first part of the story actually happened in the doctor's office last spring. Sophia didn't do great on her vision test at her annual checkup, but I chalked it up to nerves because she wasn't fully understanding the directions. Up until that time, she had never complained of blurriness, headaches or any such.

Fast forward to last month. Sophia prepared for a normal day at school when one of her friends walks in with the coolest accessory Sophia had ever seen -- glasses! She kept her impression of these glasses mostly to herself. Just saying now and then how she liked Jocelyn's glasses. No red flags there.

Over the last few weeks, Sophia has been asking if she could have her eyes checked. I did connect it to the new glasses in school, but combined with last spring's eye test, I didn't think I could ignore her insistence that sometimes things get blurry and that she sees things really small.

Still pretty sure that this was in Sophia's head, brought about by her love for accessories, I set up an appointment at Walmart Vision yesterday. She did great through the whole test. I was actually very impressed at her willingness to do anything and everything they asked. I realized just how much she wanted glasses.

After the test was over, she was incredibly disappointed to learn that her eyesight is nearly perfect. About halfway through the test, the optometrist had looked and me and said, "So far, it's looking pretty good!" So, when she heard the glasses-free news, she said, "But didn't he say they were just pretty good?" She was really very bummed. I'm not kidding.

Since we were at Walmart, I decided to let her try some of these five dollar accessory glasses, but she very quickly lost interest when I told her that she couldn't wear them to school. Obviously, I had missed the point completely. She's right, though. She is really cute in glasses.

She has recovered from her disappointment, and Erick and I are relieved that, at least for the moment, she is spared the hassle of dealing with glasses.