Andrew Smith: 'I found nothing simple about wearing glasses'

MY four-year-old daughter Sylvie officially became a wearer of glasses this week. I must be honest and admit I felt a mixture of shame and disappointment when my wife called from the hospital to relate eye tests had shown that, for what's hoped to be only a year or so, Sylvie would have to follow the path I did as a wean.My first thought was that, genetically, I'd let my first born down.

My eyesight imperfections are considerable. In my younger days, they required corrective surgery. Which amounted to me having to wear an eye patch on what was termed a lazy left eye. It wasn't enough for it to be stuck over my metal rims. It had to be slapped right on to my skin.

Peeling it off left me with nary an eyebrow; it was horrible. It ruined my telly watching too. I could never decipher my clouds from my furnace smoke when watching Ivor the Engine. For a time, anyway. I realised with the judicious use of a compass I could poke a hole in it I could see through but that parents would not detect.

Luckily, Sylvie's simple wearing of glasses will allow her to avoid said patch. Yet, frankly, I never found anything simple about wearing glasses. Everyone now rushes to say it isn't so bad, trendy even, but I found it a right pain, each spot of rain, stray thumbprint and sweat bead on my hooter locking me in to lens hell. And I wasn't alone, judging from the stories triggered among friends and family by the news that Sylvie is about to become a specs sufferer.

My brother John, who at the age of two had an operation to correct a squint – they really didn't have any sugar-coated terminology for defects in the 1970s – hated his glasses with a passion even I couldn't muster. He flushed them down the toilet, a popular abuse I've since discovered. He buried them in the garden. And forever bent and buckled them outrageously out of shape.

Of course, Sylvie hears nothing of these terrible tales. All around her she sees people happily sporting and enthusing over their eye fashion. She has been positively champing to join their ranks. Indeed, what started as an episode to put me on a downer has proved uplifting. She was fitted for her glasses yesterday. The optometrist (what was wrong with optician?) attempted to give her the hard sell on the Mr Men line and various designer ranges. Sylvie was having none of it. She would not be dissuaded from demanding the NHS freebies, which showed her good taste since these were indeed the classiest and subtlest. Maybe she's a Morrissey acolyte in the making.

That's my girl.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 13 February, 2011