"But I don't want to get glasses!" Randy whined, pulling hard against his mother's tight, four handed grip as she hauled him through the parking lot on the way into the big (if kind of blurry) building. "Everybody's gonna call me names!"
His mother and father shared a heavy sigh, their fourth that afternoon and at least eighteenth that day. "Randy, honey, lots of little monsters get glasses, and they get along just fine. No one will call you names."
She was WRONG, wrong wrong wrong, and Randy KNEW that. They called him names NOW. 'Skinny Twiggy', 'Slimy Mimey', 'Lizard Lips', 'Bug Eyes'. But no matter how loud he said it, Mommy wouldn't listen to him. "I can see, Mommy! I don't need them!"
"Oh yeah? How many fingers am I holding up?" Aggie snickered, trailing behind their father. Randy squinted at her, trying to figure out when she'd grown two extra arms.
"Uuhh..."
"Exactly."
"Randy," his father started sternly, a firm edge of impatience leaking into his tone. "Your sister wears glasses. I wear glasses. It runs in our family, and now you need glasses. You're getting them today and I don't want to hear another word about it, or you're not getting any slicecream later."
Randy bit his lip and pouted hard as his eyeballs burned with tears, making his sight even worse. Stupid, dumb Miss Higgenclaw, telling his mom at the parent teacher meeting that oh, yes, Randy was a good little student, but don't you think he'd be an even better one if he could see clearly, and OH, look at that, I have the number for the closest eye doctor right here!
Suffice it to say he now hated his once most loved teacher from the bottom of his seven year old heart.
His frown was heavy enough to weigh down an airplane and his scales were the color of rotten milk, but Randy stumbled along as they entered the eye doctor's office. It was chilly- he hated feeling chilly- and nearly empty. Randy hunched down on himself and glared at the floor, despising everything and everything.
His mother walked up to the front desk and smiled at the receptionist. "Hello. Randall Boggs, here for an eye exam."
The female, squidlike monster squinted down at him through her ugly cat eye glasses, and Randy the urge to bare his teeth at her.
"Yes, of course. Boggs. Dr. Lops will see you immediately." She used a tentacle to wave them through a door to the left and down a long, sterile hallway. Randy yelped when the door swung closed on his tail, taking a bit off the end.
So now he was getting glasses and his tail would be itchy while that piece grew back.
They entered a bright room, and Randy almost slammed into the back of a huge spider monster with bristly hair all over and a face full of huge, bulging eyes, each one covered with a different kind of lense.
His pincers spread in a wide smile as he turned and saw the monsterling glaring up at him. "Oh! Excuse me, friend. It's not often that someone sneaks up on me." He stuck out one of his numerous legs to shake Randy's hand, but Randy crossed all four of his legs tight together.
"Er, yes. Well." The doctor coughed and turned to his parents. "You must be the Boggs family, and this fellow here must be Randall."
"Randy," Randy hissed.
"Randy, of course." The doctor nodded, and his mother broke in. "Dr Lops, thank you for seeing us today. Randy's been having some trouble in school and he really needs glasses."
"No I-"
"Randall!"
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Randall." Dr Lops said kindly. Randy ignored him, and be clicked his jaw parts thoughtfully. "I see. Hm..."
He turned to back to Randy's parents. "Why don't you go fill out the rest of the paperwork up front with Liz, and I'll wait with young Randy here."
When they were gone, the doctor turned to Randy and waved at a chair in the middle of the room. "You can sit right there, while we wait for them."
The chair was big and long. No matter how much he squirmed and shifted, he couldn't get himself to fit in it right. He crossed his arms and slouched down in it, shivering at the sharp, weird looking devices on the table beside him.
"Now, Randy. You don't look very excited," Dr. Lops chided gently. Randy huffed.
"I don't need stupid glasses. It's all my teacher's fault. She wants people to laugh at me."
"Indeed." the doctor smiled. "You look like a very smart little boy. How about this. I have a little test, and it's very easy. If you get a good score, you don't have to get glasses today, or any other day."
Randy's jaw dropped, and hope filled his voice. "Really?! You swear?"
"I promise. As soon as your parents get back, we'll take it."
Randy beamed smugly and squiggled with happiness in his chair, despite Aggie's giggling in the corner. He was the smartest one in his class. This would be easy.
When his mom and dad came back, Dr. Lops instructed a grinning Randy to sit all the way back in the chair, and then he pulled a huge, white thing out of the ceiling and placed it over his face. It looked like a big pair of goggles, and Randy blinked. He could SEE through it, really see.
"Alright, Randy. When you hear a beep, I want you to look in the goggles and tell me what the letter is on the far wall."
His smile grew. That letter was OBVIOUSLY an A!
"Are you ready?"
"Yup!"
First beep. "A!"
Second beep, and the letter changed. "G!"
Third beep. Dr. Lops touched something on the goggles, and his eyes were even MORE clear. "L!"
"Alright, Randy. Very good. Now, do the same thing in three, two...one."
He touched something else on the goggles, and suddenly-
"W-whuh?"
Everything was suddenly fuzzy. He couldn't see ANYTHING.
"Randy? Everything alright?"
"Uuuh..." Randy bit his lip and struggled to force the smudge of black on the far wall to make a latter. He just had to keep doing good, and he could escape his glasses fate.
"Uhm...P-Puh...P?"
The goggles cleared up once more for a small second-
"R." Dr. Lops said cheerfully. Randy was devastated.
"Let's try again."
The rest of the test only went from bad to worse.
"T?" F. "U?" V. "M?" W. W.
By the time the goggles came away, Randy was almost in tears and Aggie was laughing her tail off. He felt tricked and betrayed.
"We can head up front, and Liz can put your prescription in the machine while you pick out your new glasses!"
Randy didn't even wait for his parents. He slithered out of the chair and stomped as best and as loud as he could back through the hallway, wishing bad things on every adult he saw.
One of the attendants saw him and directed him over to a huge wall of glasses that towered over him, all the way to the very tip top of the ceiling.
"Take your time, sweety." she simpered. He scowled at her, but she didn't notice. When she walked away, he started rifling reluctantly through the glasses on display. There were square ones, circle ones, long ovals, ones with chains and polka dots and hundreds more, and he hated all of them. He was ready to curl up into a ball and cry his eyes out.
"Whooa. Randy? What are you doing here?"
Randy jumped and twisted to see a big, blue violet blur standing behind him that, after a second or two, he registered as his best friend, but there was something...VERY different about him.
"J-Jimmy?!" Randy squawked. "W-what happened to your MOUTH?!"
Even without glasses, he could clearly see the big mess of twisty, complicated looking wires, bands, and shiny pieces sticking out of Jimmy's face, coiled around his fangs and secured somewhere deep inside.
"Oh, yeah. I'm at the dentisths." Jimmy explained- or tried to, past the weird, spitty lisp. "I gotta wear thith for a while cauthe the doctors sthaid my teeth were growing too fasth."
Randy watched the braces shift with every word and shivered. Glasses were NOTHING compared to...to THAT. "I am so sorry."
Jimmy shrugged. "Eeeh. Yeah, it sthucks. But mommy sthays it'll be better phfor me."
Randy felt himself blush all over. He was acting like a brat about a stupid pair of glasses, and his best friend was walking around with a set of magnets in his mouth. What's worse, Jimmy didn't even seen to mind.
Maybe getting glasses wasn't too bad.
"Wow..." he whispered.
"Are you getting glassthes?" Jimmy asked loudly, and Randy blushed harder as he turned back to the wall. "Yeah. I don't really like any of the ones I've picked though..."
"Can I help you?" Jimmy grinned, nearly blinding him.
"S-sure-?"
"Here, these are nice! Try em!" Without further ado, he reached up and plucked a pair that had eluded Randy's reach, pushing them into his face and spinning him around to look in the mirror. They were big and orange, square frames with smaller lenses off to each side. Randy couldn't help it- he started giggling, and he couldn't stop. They just looked so funny.
"I d-don't think so," he laughed. Jimmy started giggling too, and that was how their parents found them, laughing next to a huge pile of discarded glasses, making goofy faces in the mirrors.