Little D Does Not Need Glasses

When I was a little kid I wished I had braces. My teeth came in perfectly straight but since my best friend Kari had braces, I felt left out. I started to put little rubber bands on my teeth to pretend. They hurt a little bit and the rubber tasted disgusting but it was worth the imitation. Little kids sometimes want things that other kids have even if it's painful or ridiculous or ugly.

Little D wants glasses. Maybe it's because both his big brother Ray and his favorite cousin Sammy have glasses and they talk about how they are twins. Little D must feel left out because he searched the medicine cabinet until he found an old pair of Ray's glasses to wear. I gave him the common sense parental speech about how he doesn't need glasses and he should be grateful he doesn't have bad eyes and that I wish my eyes were like his and I'm going to have to spend lots of money in order to do it. I also explained that wearing glasses when you don't need them isn't good for your eyes. All this didn't sink in--except for one thing. Little D started to get a headache and felt dizzy after wearing the glasses. But this only helped him to realize that he needed glasses with plain glass in them. Somehow he solicited Boo Crandall, a long-time friend of Dave and I to get him a pair of glasses that would work. Boo came through.

I saw Little D coming home from school the other day. He was riding his scooter and his backpack was on his back, and a pair of big black rimmed glasses were on his face. I think it was just about the most adorable thing I've seen lately.

adorable little D

He let me know that his teacher told him he could only wear his glasses to school on "Glasses Day" (whenever that is).

This all reminds me of my sister-in-law Amanda (aka Manna). David asked her to speak at his farewell when he was leaving to serve a mission. Manna was really shy back then about things like sharpening her pencil in front of kids at school and probably things like speaking in front of 200 people. She did it though and I was really proud of her. She walked slowly up to the front of the chapel, looking down (there was no way she'd sit in front on the stand). She pulled out her talk and put it on the podium and then she pulled out a pair of frames (no lenses in the frames mind you) and put them on. Her eyes are about as perfect as Little D's but with those frames, she had the courage to give her talk (with her head down the whole time). Then she took them off and folded them up and put them away and shuffled off of the stand. It was a moment that endeared Manna to me forever... like how I felt toward Little D when I saw him cruising home the other day.

manna bear

P.S. No one seemed to think I was cool for wearing glasses, unless the girl who came up to me and said "I don't mean to be rude but those glasses make you look like a bug!" really meant "I'm jealous of your cool pink on the top, purple on the bottom glasses that cover half your face." Thanks mom for picking those ones out for me.