Simona 035 - 036

Simona leading us back to the final days of the cat eye style, just over half a century ago. While the cat eye shape of the frame is still visible, the eyebrow line of the frame is almost straight. I was a only schoolboy in 1962 but already very much aware of this subtle change in eyewear fashion. It all started when one of my grandmothers invited me to try on her rimless glasses for long distance, Robert McNamara style. This was in 1956 or 1957 and it changed my world. I could see quite well through her rimless glasses but everything seemed a bit smaller and further away. I described her what I saw and she produced her pink cat eye reading glasses, saying "Now try these and tell me what you see". Another world opened. When looking in the distance, everything was a bit blurry but when I looked at my hands, they were magnified. I described this to her and she said, that's why I am changing glasses all the time. My grandmother was an eccentric lady, hated by most of my family because she could be quite moody at times. I always liked her because she was so different from the rest but all of a sudden, it dawned to me how she dealt with her mood swings. All she had to do was putting on her rimless glasses when she felt a need to push the world away from her - and switching to the pink cat eye glasses when she wanted the world to come close to her. After that experience I started observing other bespectacled ladies in the streets, wondering if they were magicians like my gran. Only five years later, during a biology lesson, I learned that glasses were simply tools to improve the eyesight of their owners. My granny was dead by then so I decided that she would always remain a magician to me.