My granddaughter Naomi came to see me last month to show me her new glasses. She has joined her sister and a cousin in needing eyewear. In fact, hers have a bifocal lens without a line.

She seems to have adjusted better to bifocals than her grandfather did. I remember my first pair. The Sunday after I got them I was serving as the lector at St. Mark’s. When it was time to read the Old Testament lesson, I carefully went up the steps to the pulpit. The Bible was already open to the selected verses and I bobbed up and down trying to focus on the large print.

I must have looked like I was drunk as a skunk at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning!

Naomi’s Aunt Rebecca also needed glasses as a child. She was still a preschooler, though rather precocious, when she was tested.

Her mother had told her that Dr. Kaplan would show her a chart and she was to read the letters on it row by row.

When she was in the chair, Don turned on the machine and instead of letters it was a pediatric chart using symbols like birds and horses and birthday cakes.

When they left the office, Rebecca turned to her mother and announced that she wasn’t sure she wanted to be treated by a doctor who didn’t even know his letters yet!

On a later visit, while in the waiting room, Rebecca climbed up on the chair to study the diplomas on the wall. When she saw Dr. Kaplan’s undergraduate diploma, she asked her mother, “Where did this man go to school? I can’t read this.”

Don Kaplan was a Harvard graduate. His diploma was in Latin.

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a retired longtime teacher in Groton Public Schools.