I grew up in Imola, a town where you can feel the speed in the air even when there’s no race. Under the sweltering Emilia-Romagna sun, the asphalt always had that specific scent, as if its pores eternally remembered the heat of Formula 1 tires. My father used to say that engines were alive—that they breathed, suffered, and fought. He took me to the track whenever he could. He showed me every curve, recited the names of the drivers, and spoke of the fates that were decided in a split second. I learned very early on that there is a pure, stark beauty in a perfect racing line.
My father was a massive Formula 1 fan, so he took me to races from the time I was a toddler. For a true aficionado in Italy, the "Holy Trinity" of tracks (Imola, Monza, Monaco) was mandatory. We never missed our home turf in Imola for the San Marino Grand Prix, followed by the legendary Monza for the Italian GP, and, of course, the glitz of Monte Carlo. Monaco was the one that truly stayed with me: the way the cars danced through those impossibly tight corners and that dark, deafening roar as they charged through the tunnel. I still remember the icons of that era: Michael Schumacher, Damon Hill, Jean Alesi, Nigel Mansell, Mika Häkkinen…
That summer of 1995 was endlessly long and hot, thick with the smell of baked asphalt. Jovanotti’s hit “L'ombelico del mondo” played incessantly on the radio. To me, a seven-year-old, it was incomprehensible that the world even had a belly button—which is what that title literally means, "The Navel of the World"—because my entire world was the kitchen. It was my proving ground, my high-stakes racetrack where I spent hours on end. The cold tiles were my tarmac, the massive legs of the oak table were the treacherous bends of Monte Carlo, and the white edge of the refrigerator was the start-finish line. I would drive the same line for hours, repeating it until every turn and every vibration of the tiny electric motor in my toy car were perfectly timed in my head. I was the best driver in the neighborhood, invincible in my speed.
Then, the inevitable happened. I went into the corner by the old wooden cupboard much too fast. I tried to drift, just like I’d seen the pros do, but the long, thin antenna of the car snagged the edge of the tablecloth, which hung just a few centimeters too low. I heard that sickening sound of porcelain sliding across wood. There was that brief, vacuum-like moment of absolute silence where time stands still, followed by a sharp, deafening crash. The porcelain shattered against the hard tiles into a thousand tiny, jagged shards.
My father’s voice came from the living room, heavy and ominous, before he even appeared in the doorway. When he burst into the kitchen, his face was flushed deep red, his breath quick with that sudden, disproportionate rage that freezes you to the spot. His favorite mug—dark blue, with that familiar chipped rim he loved despite everything—lay in pieces around my halted car.
— What have you done? You broke my mug! — he shouted, towering over me like a mountain blocking out the sun. I looked at the floor. I saw the shards and felt my heart tighten in my throat, but my childhood mind, paralyzed by the fear of his unpredictable reaction, searched for any way out, any crack in reality itself.
— What mug? — I whispered. My voice was so quiet I could barely hear it myself. It was a desperate, instinctive defense.
— Can’t you see it? This one! My favorite! — he roared, pointing a finger at the undeniable evidence of my crime lying between my sandals.
— No, I don’t see it — I replied, staring fixedly into the empty air past him. It was the lie of a desperate person, an attempt to erase reality simply by denying it.
My father stopped abruptly. His anger transformed into a cold, sarcastic smile. He leaned in close, so close I could see every pore on his skin and smell the coffee he had just been drinking.
— Fine. If you can’t see it, do you want me to take you to the eye doctor? Then you’ll get glasses! So you can finally see straight, Matteo. And no car for a month!
He turned and walked out, leaving me alone with my shards. The days that followed turned into weeks, and our kitchen became unnervingly quiet. Without the hum of my red Formula car, the room felt empty and cold, even in the middle of August. But what ate at me wasn't the ban; it was my father's sentence: "You’ll get glasses."
School started, and every day when I came home, I wanted to ask him when he was finally going to take me to the optometrist, but I simply didn't have the courage. At school, I began to observe every child who wore glasses with near-obsessive secrecy. I no longer saw them as boys and girls to be pitied; I studied them with a strange mix of envy and genuine admiration. I watched how they pushed them up their noses, how the frames caught the glare of the cold fluorescent classroom lights.
I can’t remember exactly how many kids in my class wore glasses back then, but I remember someone new would pop up with frames every so often. I was in second or third grade then, and I particularly remember a girl in the upper years, probably seventh or eighth grade, who had incredibly thick glasses. Because of her strong prescription and the heavy lenses, her eyes looked tiny through the glass—almost supernatural and hypnotic. Every time she passed in the hallway, I would freeze. I can’t explain exactly why, but I loved that look. I wished I had to wear glasses just like those—heavy, conspicuous, with lenses that completely altered the anatomy of the face.
My longing was no longer passive; it became an active quest, a sort of guerrilla mission in the school corridors. Every time someone appeared with glasses, a restlessness woke up in me. One day, a girl named Nattalia came to school wearing glasses. I finally summoned the courage to go up to her and ask if I could borrow them. When I slid them onto my nose, my heart was racing, but the world looked exactly the same. I only realized later they were a weak "plus" prescription that my young eyes handled without effort. Still, the feeling of the frames on my face, that foreign object pressing against the bridge of my nose, was enough to feed my hunger. It became my routine. I often asked other kids to lend me their glasses. They usually let me, thinking I was just playing. Those brief minutes were incredibly exciting for me—a taste of a borrowed reality, a mask I wore to see who I was as "the one who wears glasses."
By fifth grade, the game got serious. My friend Adriano, who was a year younger, started wearing glasses. He told me he couldn't see the board and the teacher had sent him to the doctor, where they found out he was nearsighted. I asked to try them, and he gave them to me without a second thought. This was different from Nattalia’s. Everything looked shrunk and distant, but I forced my eyes to see through them. Every time we hung out, I’d end up wearing Adriano’s glasses for hours. When he eventually got a new pair, I was more excited than he was. I asked to borrow his old ones, and he told me he was tired of lending them to me every time—he’d just give me the old pair since he didn't need them anymore. To me, it was the most precious gift I’d ever received. I no longer had to beg. I now carried the key to the blurred world in my pocket.
From that day on, my life split in two. In front of my father, I was still Matteo who could see perfectly. But the moment I was alone in my room, or as soon as I turned the corner of our street toward the park, the glasses would slide onto my nose, forcing my eyes into a constant, grueling strain.
After months of this, the day of the school physical arrived. When the doctor concluded I couldn't read the letters on the chart, I didn't feel fear. I felt triumph. The referral to the specialist was like a trophy in my hands. Stepping into the optometrist’s office felt like entering a temple. As the doctor swapped lenses, the world shifted: from a total blur to crystalline sharpness, then back to that soft gray haze I had grown to love through my friend’s glasses.
I didn't have to act much. My eye muscles were already used to the strain and the blur. As I read the letters, I could feel my heart pounding. Every "wrong" answer was a step closer to my goal. I wanted the number on that prescription to be as high as possible. When she finally wrote it down—minus 2.25 in both eyes—I felt an incredible rush of relief. I was no longer Matteo the pretender; I was Matteo who needed glasses.
Choosing the frames was the most important task of my young life. I purposefully chose the thinnest frames possible—delicate metal threads—so they wouldn't hide the thickness of the lenses, but rather make them stand out in all their glory. Or I’d pick clear ones that highlighted the "concentric ring" effect that a high prescription creates. I wanted the world to see the glass.
When I first came home with them, my father gave me a small smile. He said they suited me and asked if I had to wear them all the time. With indescribable pride, staring at him through the lenses, I replied:
Only then, in the safety of my room behind closed doors, did my true "laboratory" begin. I would wait for my father to go to work or for the house to fall into a deep sleep, and then I’d start my ritual. I’d pull out Adriano’s old glasses and carefully nest them over my new -2.25s. It looked ridiculous—the frames clashing and creaking—but it gave me what I craved: the feeling of being "the one with the thick lenses." Through those double layers, the world was warped. My face in the mirror looked foreign, my eyes shrunken, and the room curved at impossible angles. But I found peace in that distortion. The weight of two frames pressed against my ears and nose; every sore spot was part of the experiment. My private lab was where I tested the limits of my sight, ruling over my blurry kingdom of glass.
Months passed, and I became an expert at wearing double glasses. I longed for the day I wouldn't have to improvise, when my gaze would be permanently trapped behind a single, massive, powerful lens. I began to obsessively imagine the numbers on my prescription growing like points in a race. My first check-up was a cold shower. The doctor’s words: "Matteo, your prescription is the same, see you in six months," hit me harder than any punishment. I left the office feeling the bitterness of defeat. For me, stagnation wasn't good news; it was a wall in the way of my goal.
But I wasn't discouraged. I would sit for hours in my dark room, looking at my reflection in the -2.25s, visualizing what it would be like at -3 or -4. I researched ways to "worsen" my vision. I’d purposely read tiny print by candlelight or hold a book so close to my face that my eyes cramped. I didn't do it because I couldn't see—I did it because I wanted to be that boy "with the thick glasses." Adriano’s remark about me being "too embarrassed to admit" I couldn't see became the perfect cover. Everyone believed the story of the shy boy who "woke up" too late. I kept wearing two pairs at once, ramping up the pressure on my pupils.
Six months later, I was back in that cold office. This time, I was ready. My "lab work" had paid off. When the heavy metal testing frame was lowered onto my face, the letters on the board were just vague smudges, like distant headlights in a fog. The doctor kept clicking in stronger and stronger lenses, searching for the point of clarity.
— I can see now — I lied, the moment the image became "thick" enough.
— Matteo, it seems your prescription has jumped quite a bit — she said calmly, unaware of the fire inside me. Minus 3.50 in both eyes.
A wave of warmth washed over me. It wasn't just the jump in numbers; it was my entry into the zone of "real" glasses. When I showed up at school, no one cared about the thicker lenses; they just saw new frames.
After -3.50, the "laboratory" became a way of life. Whenever I could, I wore the old and new pairs together. At every subsequent exam, every six months or a year, I entered the office with the same cold determination a driver has entering the most dangerous turn at Imola. Through high school, the numbers kept climbing: -4.00, -4.50, then -5.25. Every time the doctor added stronger glass to that heavy testing frame, I felt my pupils dilate with excitement. The world without glasses had long since ceased to exist for me. It was a smear of colors and flickering lights, exactly as I’d dreamed of as a boy. But I wanted more. I wanted that physical barrier between me and the world to be as massive as possible.
I started to relish the ritual of going to the optician. I deliberately chose the thinnest frames to emphasize the lenses. When I hit -6.00, the world became truly complicated. Without my glasses, I couldn't recognize a face two meters away. But I still, whenever I was alone, put the old glasses over the new ones. That double image, that extreme strain, became an addiction. The headaches were frequent, a pulsing in my temples became my background noise, but every time my eyes watered from the effort, I knew I was winning.
Finally, at a check-up near the end of school, I reached the number that sounded like absolute victory: -7.50. The doctor shook her head in concern, mentioning genetics and overstrain, but I just stared at the piece of paper. These weren't ordinary lenses anymore. These were the lenses that shrunk my eyes just like that girl in the hallway. My face had finally achieved its new anatomy.
Adriano never made it that high. Over time, he grew tired of the weight of frames and switched to contacts, choosing practicality. As for the girl from the beginning—I see her occasionally, but her gaze is clear now, without those hypnotic lenses that once enchanted me. Either she went to contacts, or she escaped our shared kingdom forever with LASIK.
And me? I stayed here. I didn't become an F1 driver like I dreamed of as a child, but I work as a dispatcher for a local retail chain. My job is control and trajectories, just like it always was. As I sit in front of my monitors, my heavy glasses constantly sliding down my nose, I track the movement of trucks on the screen. And sometimes, I still "catch" myself playing with those real, massive trucks, imagining they are bolids racing through the tunnel of Monte Carlo.
In those moments, as I push my heavy glasses back up, the seven-year-old Matteo inside me is still driving his perfect line—invincible in his speed, hidden behind his thick glasses.
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