Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 25, 2012

I like that he’s putting on glasses in the last panel. It’s a nice touch. (I like a lot of other stuff about this strip, but I wanted to point that out.)

I was in 4th grade before I discovered that I needed glasses. I looked out the window and said hey, i can see leaves on that tree. My mom says to this day she still feels guilty about it.

When I was in elementary school they gave us hearing tests. It was found out that I had about a 80% hearing lose on my left side. When I went up for my draft physical I brought all of the test results with me. Even they tested me three time and found that I had a severe hearing lose on the left side. Yup, you guessed it. I passed the physical.

Kids don’t notice.When I was in kindergarten I drew solid green lawns, and trees like green clouds on stems.My teacher preferred the spiky grass, and branched trees with big leaves that some other kids drew.I protested that “you can’t see leaves on trees!”In 1st grade my teacher teased me about writing with my nose,cos it was almost touching the paper.Finally after half the year, my 2nd grade teacher realised that I couldn’t read the blackboard.I remember walking out of the eye doctor’s office with my new glasses, at 7 1/2, and marveling at seeing blades of grass while standing up.

The school I system I substitute in did vision screening last week. Made sure they got every kid in the school. It’s only right.

Hey, I gotta go man,….that 5th panel is freaking me out! Yikes!!

And now we all know Mrs. Olsen’s eyes are brown.

My vision started degrading after sixth grade. Before I got glasses, I needed to sit in the front row to see the blackboard. When I finally got glasses, the ability to distinguish individual leaves on trees was great. Also, streetlights at night stopped being blurry blobs.

Of course, I was able to figure out that my vision was bad because I could remember it being good, unlike Dirkie in today’s comic.

I was seven years old before I found out that I was not supposed to see two of everything. No wonder I couldn’t hit the stupid baseball. I couldn’t figure out which one to hit!

Panel 5 is very nicely executed. That would probably have been extremely difficult to draw 20 years ago, and almost impossible to reproduce in newspapers. It also gets the point across effectively without needing a single word.

10 out of 10, Jef.

For me it was first grade – thank goodness for that Sunday School teacher – she realized when I had to sit in the back of the class one day that I couldn’t identify pictures.When i put on my first pair of glasses, I didn’t recognize my Mom until she started talking to me (and I had to practically relearn how to walk things were so different).

Here, not only are they required, but Optomitrists and Otolaryngologists come to the schools and administer the tests on all the students themselves

What a fantastic job on that 5th panel. (& a great topic of the strip as well.)

We had annual vision testing in school back in the 60s. In eighth grade it was discovered my vision was quite bad (I had apparently been guessing good up until that point on which direction the little Es were pointing). I was amazed at the difference my glasses made. I just supposed no one could see any better than I could up to that point.

I remember the “Wow! I can see!” feeling after my first pair of glasses. It was a lot like the feeling I had after cataract surgery when I looked in the mirror and realized that everyone who had been telling my I didn’t look my age was lying through their teeth!

Most optometrists still don’t check for eye muscle disorders like convergence insufficiency though. You can have 20/20 vision and still not read well because your eye muscles don’t work right. Worse, mercury is a big cause of this, poisons the third cranial nerve that controls the eye muscles, and even fewer doctors know how to do the hair test for that. If you don’t get the mercury out vision therapy won’t work permanently.

My vision was never that bad (I don’t need glasses indoors, except in very large rooms), but what I noticed when I first got glasses was that my depth perception was suddenly much sharper. Everything looked like a scene in a Viewmaster.

This is an awesome strip! We finally see Mrs. Olsen true eyes form from the mirror glasses! Good job seeing her!

I thought my hearing was fine until I got it tested (kids got tired of repeating themselves and me saying “huh”). Now I still have trouble adjusting to hearing aids as I hear so much more than I used to hear for years. To me it sounds “normal” when I take them off in the care and the wind noise is less.

Some 35 years ago, the school system I grew up in did.

Love that fifth panel!

I got glasses in 10th grade, got tired of being called “Four Eyes”, so I begged for contact lenses. Then my “dear” aunt accused me of “copy catting” her daughter (my cousin) because she had contact lenses and told all the relatives that.

I was in 5th grade. Thought my vision was fine until we had eye exams, and my friend rattled off the entire eye chart clear from the back of the line. I still couldn’t distinguish it at the front of the line. They finally had me look through a pinhole in a piece of black paper. Wow! I was completely blown away at the difference. Had glasses within the week.

In the seventh grade, it was determined that I needed glasses. When I got them, I was amazed at what I could see! For several days, I marveled at how the world had changed. It took a couple of years for me to remember them every day though. Now, 31 years later, I don’t even remember putting them on in the morning, it’s as automatic as breathing.

My Dad used to have the neighbors over every week to play music. One of the musicians was an old guy who was born in a house where Dad’s is now. One night, during a break, one of the players commented that the old guy was wearing glasses for the first time. The elder picker told of how he’d gone to get his driver’s licence and failed the vision test. He went home to ponder his next move, and remembered some things that his nephew had given him that were up in the attic. He rummaged through the boxes, and sure enough, found a pair of glasses. He went downstairs and tuned on the ball game. He told us “Sure enough, the pitcher threw the ball, and I could see it go from his hand to the catcher’s glove. I watched that and decided these would work!”. He got his new licence the next day. All I could think of, looking out the window into the dark, was that I needed to leave before him, as he was parked next to my car.

One more thing: Jef has some great artwork in his strips, particularly on Sunday. Today though, he went above and beyond. Bravo Mr. Mallett!

Love the art in the 5th Panel! :)

In St. Louis, all children are given eye exams and hearing exams. I’m pretty sure this happens at a number of grade levels, but it was the 7th graders in my school who were tested every year (and any new students to the school).

They did at my school. Not that I needed outside evidence that I needed glasses by the time my eyesight got bad enough that I did.

Kids today who get eye exams must have it pretty easy. They have machines now that can detect how well someone’s eyes can focus and write accurate prescriptions just by staring into them for a few seconds and trying to focus on the picture inside. In and out, no fussing with “Which looks clearer, #2 or #3?” Amazing.

Is it just me, or does showing Mrs. Olsen’s eyes make her a little less scary? =)

What a beautiful, tender tribute to veteran, caring teachers… where ever they may be found, in the classroom or out. Like the Grinch’s heart, my soft spot for Mrs. Olsen just grew three times larger! ♥ ♥ ♥ Brilliantly done, Mr. Mallett !

I was tested before first grade and briefly wore a patch for amblyopia but was in the 3 grade before being moved in the classroom from front to back made us all know I needed glasses, stat!

Ahh, a rare moment of brilliance by Mrs. Olsen.

These moments of subtle brilliance are one of the rare redeeming glimpses into her character.

I love the suprizing element to this comic!I wasn’t expecting that.

I discovered myopia in high school. I had bottle-bottoms by the time I got my draft physical. I said “the top one is an E because it is always an E, but I really can’t see it.” They passed me anyway. When I had my eyeballs rebuilt after cataracts, I had an unrestricted driver’s license for the first time in my life.

A good teacher is worth a million bucks.

I’ve worn glasses since age seven and the lenses got real thick real fast. Cataract surgery two years ago. Still not 20/20 but I still marvel at the leaves on the trees. Oh, and the whole strip is marvelous. Anybody in this strip can be the butt of a joke one day and quite a remarkable human being on the next (even or especially Frazz himself) but it is particularly nice to see this side of Mrs. Olsen.

They do.

My grandmother felt guilty until the day she died because neither she nor anyone else realized how bad my dad’s vison was. By the time he got his first pair of glasses at age 8, he was classified as being “legally blind”. When he and my grandma walked out of the office with him wearing glasses for the first time, she said he spent an hour just lying on the ground and running his fingers through the blades of grass he could finally see.