Photo by Morrhigan on Freeimages.com

When you're a kid growing up, you just naturally assume the way you look at the world is the same as everyone else looks at the world. There are simple things like ice cream – everybody loves ice cream, right? Stay with me now and don't hand me any crap about lactose intolerance or juvenile diabetes, that stuff a kid doesn't know or care about. When you get a little bit older your binary world starts to acquire shades of gray, and even some colors, or in this case a better focus.

I mean that literally – I am very nearsighted; the world more than a few feet away is rather fuzzy. This didn't bother me as a kid until I needed to learn how to read the chalkboard in school. Books were just hunky-dory (an indication of just how ancient I am) since they were right there in front of me. I devoured books, I loved reading. I was good at it.

Then came sitting in a classroom and reading whatever the teacher put on the chalkboard. Even in the first row I wondered just what the teacher was doing up there. Why couldn't she (it was always a she since the school board could get away with paying a woman less than a man) write clearly. Remember – as a kid you are the center of the universe against which all things were measured; the problem couldn't be something in you!

The whole thing came to a head in music class. Remember when schools actually taught music as a separate class? This was back when educators tried to educate the whole person and not just drill you to pass a standardized test. So anyway, I was sitting in the front row but when Miss Lubbers drew a clef on the board I saw nothing much more than a long blur. Then she wrote something under the clef and I couldn't see it. I asked what she wrote and Jimmy The Jerk (Do I have to explain his name?) hollers "Cripes Chris, go get some glasses!"

Being sure that I was 100 percent normal I holler back "Shut up! I don't need no stinking glasses!"

Naturally this stopped the show and Miss Lubbers tells Jimmy The Jerk to behave himself and explains what she just wrote. The class settles down, but when the bell rings Miss Lubbers stops me and asks if I have ever had my eyes checked. I'm still pissed about Jimmy The Jerk, but I had long ago figured that Miss Lubbers had a very functional lie detector built into her brain, so I tell her no.

So she scribbles something out on her desk and hands me an envelope, telling me to give it to my parents. You can probably guess just how well I took that – notes to parents are inevitably, invariably, positively BAD NEWS! So I stuff it in one of my books - we didn't carry backpacks in the stone ages when I went to school – and fretted for the rest of the day.

When I got home I gave the note to my Mom, knowing full well that "accidentally loosing it" was not going to fly. She reads it and just sort of grins.

"You're having trouble reading the chalkboard?" she asks.

What could I do? I have to confess "Yeah…"

"No big deal, son. I'll make an appointment with the doctor to have your eyes checked."

"Is he gonna give me a shot?"

That was the important question. I knew just how free those doctors with those stabby things. Ouch!

"This is and eye doctor – he just looks in your eyes and asks you to read a chart."

Reading? Well, I could handle that! So, a week or so later I get checked and I indeed need glasses. Not that I got to have a choice about the frames, mind you.

I have been told I have a positive talent for the destruction of anything I wear on my body. Holes in the knees of my jeans, flapping soles on my shoes, stains on my good suit. (I will admit after all these years that I hated that suit and just sorta accidentally-on-purpose managed to stain it. Several times.) This resulted in my getting a pair of thick black plastic NERD glasses that my parents hoped I would not be able to destroy.

Fat chance, but that's another story.

Two weeks later, on a bright sunny Saturday, we got my new glasses. The guy behind the counter put them on me, wiggled them around a bit, then stuck the earpieces in a bucket of warm sand.

Just what was that about?

Turns out it warms the plastic so he could bend it around my ears. Actually it felt kinda good to have the warm things over my ears and the fit pretty well. The guy cleaned the lenses and gave them back to me so I could put them on. That wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had been dreading, so off we went out to the car.

In the words of a popular song, "Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!" When I got outside the trees at the other end of the parking lot had individual leaves. The lines on the parking spaces were clear and sharp. I discovered a whole new world out there that I never knew existed.

I could see – clearly! My world was changed from that moment forward.

So what does this little reminiscence have to do with crossdressing? Well, I had to tell you that to tell you this. With my newly enhanced sight, one of the things I noticed was girls. Not that I hadn't noticed them before, but I started to notice them, if you get my drift. Specifically, I noticed that many of the girls in my class had boobs. I know: big revelation, right? Well, since I could now actually see a girl's boobs at a distance I was able to, shall we say, study the subject in detail. Before getting my glasses, a girl at a distance was just another blob and not so different that a boy at a distance.

Over time I became more and more fascinated by the shape of a girl's body. Of course I tried to restrain myself and not be an obvious grunting neanderthal about it.

My fascination grew with time, and it was clear that I was not the only boy who was interested in girls' bodies. It took me a while to realize that I was not so much interested because I wanted to "do the dirty" with them – that was the main preoccupation of many of my classmates – but I wanted to have my body be like their bodies.

Not a good thing for a kid in the sixties to admit, so I kept it to myself. I spent a good deal of time studying the shapes of girls' bras under their clothes and wished I could be wearing one of those things. Maybe it would help me look like I wanted to look.

Naturally, there came a time when I realized that my mother wore a bra. No sister to get jealous of, so that was out. After what seemed to be an eternity and a half, I was finally alone in the house for an afternoon and I dug into the laundry and tried on her bra. The good part was that I was a growing lad (yuck!) and my mother was a reasonably petite woman – her bras fit me! I stuffed the cups with some of my socks and put my t-shirt back on.

In the words of a popular song, "Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!" Looking in the mirror I looked like a girl. OK, a girl with too short hair, no hips and lumpy boobs, but a girl. I had once again discovered a whole new world that I barely knew existed.

I could see – clearly! My world was changed from that moment forward. This was who I was supposed to be.

Of course it wasn't that easy, there were many years ahead of me trying to figure out who I was, but from that first sight in the mirror wearing my mother's bra I knew just where my life was going. By the way, I gave up on the nerd glasses as soon as I went away to college and became a hippie with wire rims.

Much cuter, believe me!