“Better to See You with My Dear”

I got new glasses today. And that was an event in itself. I was trying to dash into my eye doctor’s office before the car’s AC left my skins cells. It has been 105 degrees in Indy, and for the last two days my home AC was not working. Something about an overheated capacitor. Well, my personal capacitor was over heating, too. Throw in a couple of hot flashes and I was glowing like the tiles on the space shuttle during re-entry. Or put another way: I was hotter than Hades. But this blog is about new glasses; not molten lava streaming from my arm pits. Lovely imagery, huh?

Back to the spectacle at hand. So…I pull open the door, eager to say some silly stuff to the gals in the eye doctor’s office. Immediately I smell the pungent odor of assorted chemicals. Gee….why did they move the racks of eye glasses and replace them with shampoo? My neurons began to fire and I realized I had walked into the hair salon. Guess somebody needed glasses pretty badly.

Soon I was getting my new spectacles adjusted and such. Didn’t take long….slide them on, bend them here and there, read a card with various print and fonts. Now they even had a musical staff with notes on it. What’s that about? I couldn’t read music before or after glasses. Was that a trick question? Made me think of the classroom. I often asked my students when they got new glasses, “Do I look taller, thinner, and younger?” They didn’t know it, but recess was riding on their answer. Some were winners, some were losers. No do overs.

But I think of the Big Bad Wolf. Remember what he said to Little Red Riding Hood when she inquired about his big eyes? “Better to see you with, my dear!” I kinda hope my new glasses let me see things better. I am not talking Superman’s X-ray Vision, but I would like to be able to read the small print on important things like the time the movie starts. Or a phone number from a printed directory; the color of the shade of lipstick or the fat content in brownies. Okay…so I really DON’T want to read that.

Anyway…my new glasses are really okay. They hide the bags under my eyes and prevent me from squinting…which only creates more wrinkles. Perhaps they even make me look distinguished. Or simply old. I am trying to line up the bifocal part. Right now, my computer keyboard looks a bit warped or curvy. Do you think that is normal? And I keep stepping down stairs….where there are none. My daughter asked if I could see better. Hmmm. Not really. But I have paid the money, waited two weeks for them to arrive– and I got to startle the folks at the beauty shop, so it’s okay. I mean, you’ve seen one astigmatism, you’ve seen ’em all.

By the way you really do look good from here. In fact, I’d say you look spectacular! My new glasses wouldn’t lie. “Better to see you with my dear!” Stupid wolf. Should have asked for contact lenses.