Lazing on the first bench was my thing. It wasn’t because I was a teacher’s pet or anything—I just couldn’t see the board from the back. Dan and Rash had perfect vision, but I had no clue my eyesight was the issue. I thought the board was just too far away! Whenever I couldn’t make out what was on the board, I’d simply copy from their notebooks. Life was good—until my class teacher decided to mix things up.
One fateful day, my science teacher, the same one from the morning class, noticed me squinting at the board from the last bench, and I guess she felt bad for me. ‘Why aren’t you drawing anything?’ she asked as she loomed over my blank page. Of course, I couldn’t tell her that the chalkboard looked like some ancient hieroglyphs from a lost civilization. Instead, I mumbled something about not being able to see properly.
She wasn’t buying it, though, and refused to let me copy from my friends. Instead, she advised me to get my eyes checked. So, off to the hospital I went, with my dad in tow.
The next day, with school off, my dad and I made our way to the hospital. We waited for what felt like an eternity before my turn finally came. The doctor was probably the grumpiest person I’d ever met. He barely looked at me as he pointed to a lightbox filled with letters, starting with big ones and gradually shrinking down to microscopic scribbles.
‘Read those,’ he snapped.
I tried my best, but when I couldn’t make out the smaller ones, he grunted and scribbled something on a piece of paper. Then, we were off to another doctor, who was slightly less rude but still not exactly friendly. She glanced at the report and asked, ‘How long have you had trouble seeing?’
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‘Two years,’ I replied, not entirely sure if that was accurate.
She gave me a pitying look and said, ‘Well, you’ve got short-sightedness. Normal people have 6/6 vision, but you’re more like 6/12.’
I looked at the chart and thought, ‘Greater than 6/6? I must be some kind of mutant with super eyes!’ In my mind, I was already joining the X-Men. But reality quickly set in when the doctor explained that my superpower was actually just bad eyesight.
So, after dealing with a parade of grumpy doctors, I left the hospital with my dad, who was shocked that I needed glasses. My prescription was -1.5, which didn’t seem so bad until it started creeping up over time.
A few months later, Rash started complaining about the same thing. The board turned into a blurry mess of ancient scripts for him too. It wasn’t just me anymore—two out of the three of us were now officially ‘four-eyes.’
In class 8, we had this math teacher, Ralph. He was one of the good ones—funny, laid-back, but strict when he needed to be. He gave us homework regularly, and you had to submit it when he asked. If he caught you writing last minute, you were in big trouble. At the start of the session, I was pretty diligent, mostly because I’d already been punished a few times. But there was this one guy, Shane, who almost never did his homework and got in trouble constantly.
One day, Ralph had had enough. He was in a mood, and everyone suffered the consequences. Severe punishment all around. But honestly, getting punished was just part of school life—something to laugh about later, even if it wasn’t so funny at the time.