Department Store Glasses and Poop through a Goose

I go through department store reading glasses like poop through a goose. And, yes, we had a goose. She lived in our back yard and got our names on a ‘list.’ Who knew cable repairmen, delivery drivers and meter readers kept ‘lists?’

Right, I was talking about reading glasses. I have discovered that most department store reading glasses have a life span that mirrors a plastic fork.

A plastic fork has a useful lifespan of about four months. I know this, because, back in ’92, 1992, I packed up my daughter and some of our belongings and set out on my own. While I did remember to bring my daughter, I forgot to pack forks. There we were in an empty apartment in the big city without forks.

Four months is also about the time it took for me to move into my next relationship. Now, if my darling husband reads this he will think I married him for his forks. I said forks! No that other…

Back to the reading glasses.

They bend, the lenses scratch up, they go missing quicker than a nice looking blond girl in Aruba, and they fall apart.

I had two pair of the thinnest wire rimmed glasses that were so so cool. One pair broke, the other still clings to the small metal oblong glued to my bedroom wall. They are called ‘eye stics’ and the tiny magnets at the corner of the frames allow them to stick to metal of many kinds. The pair on my wall are hopelessly bent at one hinge but they are not lost. Parents should embed small magnets in their pretty daughters before sending them off to party in faraway places.

I’ve been buying a lot of plastic framed reading glasses that have a decidedly ugly factor. They get lost but never stolen.

I am rough with my glasses. I knock them off the laptop table several times a day. I drop them as I enter and exit the house. I fold them up and cram them into my cell phone case or my purses. I drop them some more. The lenses pop out, I pop them back in.

The most recent and probably the ugliest pair didn’t have the sort of rims that surround the cheap plastic lenses. The left one gave way a few weeks back. There was a crack in the bottom of the frames on the right side but that lens was holding. The arm thing with the hinge came off last week but with the screw still hanging on by a literal thread, my darling husband, the fork guy, fixed it.

The left lens fell out again and that side cracked and sprang at the top after another drop to the floor. But, the end of the month was not in synch with the end of our money. If I kept my head up I could keep that lens in place.

Drop. The right lens gave and the left one plopped out in solidarity.

It was not a warm day, yesterday. I took my K2, reading glasses and lawn chair out to a patch of sunshine in the east yard. I set down and began putting both lenses back in place, don’t look down I mumbled, read with good posture, hold the K2 up at eye level.

The right lens plopped out again.

I put it back and began reading with one finger on the bottom of the frame to assist the wayward lens.

At the end of a chapter I set the book aside, I was going back inside. I pinched the edge of my reading glasses to remove them when the whole bottom of the right frame fell off in my lap and the lens toppled into the grass.

To memorialize some of the glasses that have not survived the plastic fork theory of useful life, I took some photos of the frames that have not ended up in Aruba. As soon as I buy another pair, maybe vulcanized rubber, like the stuff Kongs are made of, I should persuade my darling husband to dig a grave, out by the goose so I can lay these fragmented department store readers to rest.

Is someone keeping a ‘list’ of people who torment their eyewear?

Thanks for reading and thanks Skip Miller and Audrey for missing my regular posts.

Don’t touch anything sharp.

Buy my book so I can buy a little stock in department store reading glasses.