Throughout May, we're celebrating mothers (and parental figures in general) at both of my group author blogs:
YA Outside the Lines and
Smack Dab in the Middle...So, in honor of all things Mother’s Day, I’ve decided to share the
mother of all plans. Yes, oh, yes, I had it all worked out. I was twelve, and it was the summer before
junior high, and this was it—this was going to be the moment in which I won Mom
over, got her to see things from my (admittedly, completely blurry) point of
view.
First, a bit of backstory:
I was nine years old when the worst, most tragic event of
all time came crashing down upon my slender little third-grader shoulders.
I could no longer read the chalkboard.
It happened suddenly, actually—I came back from spring break
to find that my desk had been moved by well-meaning floor-sweeping janitors
from the front row to the back. And the
daily handwriting assignment, which our teacher put up on the board for us to
copy each morning, was a complete and total blur. I couldn’t see. Period.
My first glasses were fairly strong (for 20/200
vision). And—I hated them. Talking hate here. Hate. The fact that it was 1986 didn’t help,
either. Remember glasses of the
‘80’s? The enormity! The hideousness! Uuuugh!
And it officially began: the battle with my mom for
contacts.
I didn’t just want contacts.
I lusted after them, especially as my eyes grew progressively
worse. By the time I was headed for
junior high, my prescription was creeping up toward a -5.00 (20/500 vision),
and there was no way I could just take my glasses off at that point and navigate
the majority of my days without them, haul them out of a backpack pocket to
read the board once I got to class. Not
if I didn’t want to start having long, heated conversations with hallway water
fountains, anyway.
So, the summer before seventh grade, I came up with my
infinitely brilliant plan: I would get
the ugliest pair of 1980’s glasses I
could find. I mean, ugly. Proof:
I just knew what would happen: when we picked up the
glasses, and Mom saw how awful I looked, her eyes would widen in sheer
horror. She’d insist we exchange the
glasses for contacts, immediately, if
not sooner.
Yeah. Didn’t
work. As my seventh grade picture up
there reveals.
Sure, I did get my contacts—the summer before high school, actually. And I wore them until I gleefully pitched the
lenses and all the unending vials of cleaning solution in the trash shortly
after my thirtieth birthday. In the end,
the things that are important to us as teens are never the things that are important
to us as adults. This Mother’s Day, as
my own mom and I laugh at this—and other—horribly failed grand schemes, I’ll
also be remembering that my teen characters should always have plans of their
own that are obviously doomed, that provide a bit of comic relief, and that
show them stumbling and learning and laughing all along their life’s
journey.
