Eight Years
Date: (fall 2000 – summer 2001)
Ms. Graves. Second Period. Honors Integrated something (whatever came before pre-calculus). Sophomore year in high school. While most people can only remember sleeping or making snide remarks about Graves, I remember my awesome math group which included A. Phan, myself, A. Cheung, and some other Asian who’s name slips my mind at the moment.
There are two distinct eye-problem memories from that period of time that made that class, despite how stupid the Integrated program was and how menial the class was for me, memorable. The first was that it was in that class that I got the set of glasses that would serve me into my senior year in college. They were a set of black, thin-frame Calvin Klein glasses which, at this point in time are beat up and dirty like crazy and have finally been retired as my casual glasses. Up until receiving them, though, I had been using these tacky old glasses which had lost one of their screws due to mis-storage. To remedy that problem, I took staples and molded them into a screw-like contraption. Whether or not this was good for my eyes, I don’t know, but it was essentially holding my glasses together with chickenwire.
On that great and wonderful day that I received my new (in my opinion nice-looking) glasses, I wore them with pride knowing that I would not have to resort to tape and staples to hold together my means of looking at the board.
A. Phan, of course, noticed the change and of course poked fun at the fact that I had been using staples and tape to hold together my glasses. To which I replied in my best sing-song voice:
“I can see clearly now… the rain is gone…”
This became a running joke for us as we soon sang that line very often. One day, I became fed up with the fact that I only knew the first two lines: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone | I can see all obstacles in my way” and I got A. Phan to go home and print us up a copy of the lyrics. I’ll admit that time has dimmed my memory such that I don’t remember the lyrics anymore, but I do remember singing the song on car rides to debate tournaments.
The other big eye trouble-related memory from that class was that A. Cheung, who was a totally crazy guy, also apparently had some contacts/glasses-related problems during that year. In order to see the board, instead of using old glasses or asking to sit closer to the board, brought BINOCULARS to class! Every now and then, A. Phan and I would see him attempt to surreptitiously take out these massive binoculars and set his sights on the board.