Be careful what you wish for…

by Cristinela “Chris” Niculescu

We all know the saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it!” I don’t think I knew it as a child, but I was about to understand exactly what it meant when I experienced it firsthand.

I was about nine or ten years old. In my family, almost everyone wore glasses: my mother, my father, my brother… Everyone except me.

I had perfect eyesight and, theoretically, no need for glasses. But in my childish eyes, glasses gave the people who wore them a certain something. They seemed interesting, elegant, grown-up… something that made them different from everyone else.

And, of course, I wanted a pair too.

I hinted to my mother that I would love to wear glasses. Maybe she understood what I was getting at, maybe she didn’t. Either way, I had no luck. There was no reason for anyone to buy me glasses when I could see perfectly well.

But I wasn’t the kind of child who gave up easily on a wish.

So I came up with a plan.

If I didn’t need glasses, I would have to convince them that I did.

I let a little time pass, so everything would seem as believable as possible. Then I started:

— Mom, I can’t see the board very well anymore…

A few days later:

— I get a headache when I read…

And every now and then:

— Everything looks a little blurry…

I had one small advantage: I had gone with my brother to an eye examination, so I knew, roughly speaking, what the appointment involved.

Back then, there wasn’t all the sophisticated technology we have today. You needed a little attention, the right answers and, above all, some acting skills.

Apparently, I had those…

We went to the eye doctor, and I began playing the role of a child who couldn’t see properly. I tried to answer exactly the way I imagined someone with poor eyesight would answer.

And… I succeeded!

I fooled my mother.

I fooled the doctor, too.

Finally, I was going to get what I had wanted so badly:

Glasses!

I was thrilled. At last, I was just like my mother, my father, and my brother. I had my very own pair of glasses, and I was convinced that life was going to be much more wonderful.

Except…

Life with glasses was nothing like I had imagined.

When I put them on for the first time, I discovered that things weren’t quite as wonderful as I had expected. They got in the way, they were uncomfortable, and I found it difficult to get used to them. But what could I do?

I had asked for them.

Now I had to wear them.

Naturally, my parents made sure I put them on.

And that was when I realized, perhaps for the first time, just how dangerous it can be when a wish comes true.

But I had another problem:

How was I going to get rid of them?

I tried the simple solution first. I “forgot” them at school.

Unfortunately, to my great frustration, they were found and returned to me.

I tried again.

Same story.

Those glasses seemed determined to find their way back home.

On the third attempt, however, I succeeded. I left them at school and, this time, they really disappeared.

I was convinced I was finally free.

At last!

But I didn’t yet know that my parents had plans of their own.

They came home with…

Another pair of glasses.

That was when I realized I had trapped myself in my own scheme. With the first pair, I had still had a chance. With the second, however, there was no way out.

So, after trying every possible — and impossible — solution, I had only one option left:

tell the truth.

I confessed that, in fact, I could see perfectly well. That I had simply wanted to wear glasses. That I had pretended during the eye examination and that the whole thing had been one big… childish prank.

Well…

Let’s just say the consequences were not exactly pleasant.

Suffice it to say that, at that moment, I learned that there are some wishes that are better left exactly where they are:

in your imagination.

Later, I understood that the saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it,” was no longer just a saying to me.

It had become a memory.

One of those childhood memories that, years later, makes you laugh… even though, at the time, there was absolutely nothing funny about it.

Apparently, though, my obsession with glasses had remained somewhere in my subconscious.

In high school, I got myself a pair of round, prescription-free glasses, à la John Lennon. This time, I didn’t have to fool a doctor, invent headaches, or pretend I couldn’t see the board.

I simply wore them because I liked them.

And, ironically, those glasses lasted much longer than the first pair. I still have them today, somewhere in a drawer full of memories.

Maybe, after all, that child hadn’t been completely wrong. I really did like glasses. I just hadn’t understood, at nine years old, the difference between wanting something and needing it.

And if you ask me today what I learned from my great glasses adventure, the answer is simple:

Sometimes life grants you exactly what you wished for. It just forgets to tell you about the part you never asked for.