Jack Gets Glasses

A normal person with a normal kid wouldn't be able to write an entire post about a kid getting glasses.  

"You need glasses"

"Oh.  Bummer.  Ok"

Kid gets glasses and life goes on.

Haha.  Unless you are Jack Mack, and then nothing can ever be easy or routine.  

A few weeks ago, Jack was recommended by his teacher to be tested for a special program at school. The first part of the screening for this program was vision and hearing screening.  Ok, no problem.  Ha.  Problem.  The school called me and told me that Jack passed his hearing screening with no problem, but he REALLY failed his vision screening.  Huh?  Really?  Geez.  I had no idea.  Poor Jack.  

No, poor me and everybody else Jack came into contact with after he failed his test.  In order to understand what we dealt with, I'll need you to read all of the below sentences with anger and a nasty attitude.  

To the poor lady at school that did the initial screening:

"The lady's machine is freaking BROKEN!  I kept telling her if she would just clean it it wouldn't be so blurry and I could actually see it!"

To his teacher:

"You write WAY too small.  I have to come up to read the board during class because YOU WRITE TOO SMALL!"

To the lady at the desk while I'm checking him in for his eye doctor appointment:

"I hope your machine is clean, so it's not blurry and I can actually SEE the shapes this time."

To me, while at a stoplight and I casually asked him if he could read a building sign:

"UH, NO (eye roll), of course I can't read it, it's TOO FAR AWAY!"

Complete denial, folks.  His first initial reaction was tears when I told him he failed his vision test, and then he became angry with everybody he came into contact with.  I was thankful it took a few weeks to get him into see a doctor so he had time to mull it over and come to terms with it.

He was less angry by the time his appointment rolled around.  

Tech:  "So, you're here today because you are having trouble seeing at school?"

Jack (kindly this time):  "No.  I'm not having any trouble.  I can see just fine."

The tech looks at me with a confused look on her face, I drop my face into my hands.  She understands what I'm up against, nods her head and says "well, let's just have a quick look..."

There is a really neat machine that a kid looks into and it tells them what their vision is.  No shapes, no billion letters, no eye charts, no nothing.  A computer.  So neat.  It took about two minutes from start to finish.  The doctor just fine tunes the prescription after the results are out.  That takes about five minutes and BOOM.  Done.

SO, after the test we are waiting on the eye doctor and the tech puts up some letters on the wall and leaves.  I can see all the letters perfectly, Jack immediately becomes upset.

"HERE WE GO AGAIN WITH THE STUPID BLURRY LETTERS!"  And he almost starts to cry.  

Then the doctor comes in, and puts the lense-machine thing in front of his face with what he thinks is the corrected lenses to help Jack see and asks him to read the letters on the wall.  

Jack said, and I quote:

"HOLY ....."  

He didn't say crap, he dropped that part off, but he was in complete shock.  He couldn't believe it.  A huge smile came across his face and said he started to laugh.  He said

"I CAN SEE THE LETTERS!!!  MOM!  I CAN SEE ALL THE LETTERS!"

The doctor explained to him that his vision very gradually got worse so that's why he didn't think there was a problem.  He made Jack feel a whole lot better, but he really didn't need any more convincing.  He was EXCITED about wearing glasses after that moment.  Talk about doing a complete turn around with his attitude about it.  

Thank goodness.  He sure didn't make it easy in the beginning.  

We went to the one-hour vision place next door to the doctor and he picked out two frames all by himself that he loves.

And both pair look REALLY cute on him.  He chose black and tortoiseshell, the tortoiseshell being his favorite because he said they match his hair, LOL.  

Cute litte booger, and his new glasses look great on him.