If You Can See This...

Back in January, I went in to get a new pair of glasses. The prescription ran out on my other pair (ba-dump-bump!).

Actually, I suffered a bit of an inconvenience a couple years back when I lost one of the lenses in my old frames. Not being Daddy Warbucks, I needed to prioritize my spending patterns. I was able to knock down some bills AND pay two years of my budgeted amount toward my kids first year of college (Read: I spent WAY more than I was able to keep the kid in school). Eventually, I arrived at the place that if I didn’t purchase new glasses now, I would go another two years squinting through life, causing people at church and the grocery store to think I was angry with them (true reactions... I’ve actually heard this!).

And so began the next saga in my life. It goes something like this:

January 25: Go in for eye exam and order new frames. Why order new frames when the old ones are perfectly fine? Because the scam, I mean “reality” is that my old frames “were just too worn out and would not work.” Red flag #1. So. I asked my lovely wife to join me and pick out a set of frames that she liked. We spent the better part of an hour looking at the small selection the local shop offered (Read: NON-CORPORATE shop), before finalizing. They were o.k. Not as nice as the last pair I had, but they’d do.

February 10: My new glasses are in! Hooray, hooray! I shall now see again with crystal clarity. I stop by the shop, saunter up to the counter, take a seat and pop the new set of exterior eyeballs upon my head and HOLY COW WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH THESE THINGS?!?!?! Red flag #2.

I immediately yank them off my face and tell the receptionist/customer service rep/coffee go-getter, “Uh, I can’t wear these. Something is really wrong.” She giggles at my obvious rapier-like sarcastic wit. “No. Seriously”, I say, “These things are not right.” She continues to giggle. “Look,” says I, wishing to get control of the situation before the giggle becomes a cackle, “I am not walking out of here with these glasses.”

She takes them from me and holds them above her head, peering through them with one eye closed. “They look all right to me.”

Red flag #3.

“Do you have the same prescription I do?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Well, it just seems a bit odd that you can tell they are all right for me just looking through them, and when I look through them, I can tell that they are wrong.” Look. I’m displaying a great deal of patience. You have to go pretty slow with people out here. They’re more interested in the experience than the results.
“