Strange Complaints

Look, I understand that I’ve been as blind as a bat for quite a long time. It was a fact pointed out to me as a teenager in my Driver’s Education class at our high school in Louisiana, where I discovered that other people could read the letters on the eye-chart hanging on the wall in the classroom.

Jones, the coach who was teaching the course said. You’re blind as a bat.

Soon after my parents took me to an optometrist who agreed that I was indeed possibly even more vision impaired than a bat, which is how I ended up beginning my lifelong journey with eyeglasses.

I’ve had much better luck with them than I did with that first pair, mind you, as I was dumb enough to select an all-plastic pair of classes without any nose-pads. In the Louisiana heat and my body’s natural ability to produce at least a quart of sweat per minute as a teenager, it was a miracle the glasses ever stayed on my face back then.

The reason I’m reminiscing about those first pair of glasses is that my current pair failed me the other day. 

When I took them off to clean the lenses one of those lenses - the right one - decided that it had better things to do and simply leapt clear of my hands and indeed the entire pair of glasses.

My tendency to always remove my glasses simply by holding one arm of the glasses had apparently caused a screw to wobble its way loose. While the lens was easy to spot the screw was nowhere to be found.

It was like I was trying to recreate the scene from A Christmas Story where Ralphie accidentally breaks his glasses but puts them on his face for a second as he wonders if he could pass it off as if nothing had ever happened?

Dear Readers, I could not.

Putting on my glasses as my wife risked her life by sitting in the passenger seat and allowing me to drive, I got to experience the world both as a complete blur and as a well-defined slightly more in focus blur as we headed towards the optometrist’s office. 

I’m sure I was a sight to all those watching us pass by - a grumpy old man with one tinted lens in his glasses and a completely empty frame where the other lens was supposed to be.

Is this how I entered my Bond villain stage in life?

Eventually by squinting my eyes in much the same way that I used to do in my high school algebra class, we made our way to the office and the lovely lady who fits and repairs glasses was able to replace the missing screw in my frame as she refit the lens.

All of which is my very long winded way of saying thanks to her as well as suggesting to anyone else out there who might wear glasses… make sure you remove your glasses by firmly holding onto both arms so as to not put undue pressure on either one… and always keep your older pair of glasses as a spare in case something happens.

Don’t drive half-blind or at least half-severely-blurred as I did… unless you also have the benefit of the world’s most amazing wife as a copilot who tells you IMMEDIATELY if you’re about to drive into a ditch or off of a cliff.

Just paying attention to how she tensed up her hand probably got me where I was going better than vision itself.

Wait, is that how bats make it where they're going? Is echolocation just them hearing their spouses tell them to GO THE OTHER WAY YOU IDIOT, THAT’S NOT THE OPTOMETRIST PARKING LOT THAT’S A DITCH WITH TWO SQUIRRELS WATCHING YOU DRIVE AND EMPHATICALLY WAVING THEIR NUTS AT YOU!

Acorns are nuts, right?

Either way, take care of your glasses people.

Until later…