Put a pair of glasses on a kid and you’ve shifted the course of their life. Their spectacles might save them from getting punched, help them get better grades, or just make them look smarter. Or it might make them subject to teasing. When this cover appeared in 1956, for instance, it was widely assumed among kids that glasses made girls homely and boys sissies.
Certainly this young man believes it. His pugnacious, just-barely-tolerating-it expression makes clear how little he wants glasses. He had Norman Rockwell’s sympathy. As a child in the 1900s, little Norman learned he needed glasses. His pair were fitted with round-lens frames, a style just then coming into fashion. To his peers, though, the circular lenses had a lunar appearance, and he was nicknamed “Moony.”
Norman already had a previous strike against him in the taunting world of young boys. His mother had saddled him with the middle name Perceval. When this became public knowledge, it earned him a second nickname: “Mercy Percy.”
He tried changing his image. He began lifting weights, doing pushups and deep knee bends. After a month of exercising before his bedroom mirror, he saw no improvement. His loss was our gain, because he decided, with his corrected eyesight, to take up art instead.
This article is featured in the July/August 2024 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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