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Genius Glasses

5/15/08
Ordinarily, I'm the perfect model of a treehugger, the very picture, elegantly framed and tastefully lit, of a lover of nature. My deep personal feelings for our chlorophyl-enhanced brethren, sistren and those of less evident gamete preference exceed all bounds of verbal description, at least those to which human language is limited. Who can truly express with mere words the majesty of a thousand-year-old redwood thrusting into the dawn mists, the delicate scent of a dew-spangled rosebud, the furious, limb-ripping viciousness of the besieged blackberry thicket?

Obviously, not me. Moving right along...

I love my backyard, m'kay? Luuuuuurv it. Gladly pay the squeeze to have it parked behind the house, green and grassy and wild and weedy and harboring all manner of vermin and squalor, yup, that's my garden there. But there are times in any relationship when, well, issues arise. Matters that cannot be simply ignored, that must be addressed specifically.

Stealing my glasses, now, that there is a perfect example of what I mean.

There I was, down in the lower yard amidst the cracked pavement Roman ruins (or are they Celtic? Archeologists disagree...) and the plum trees, single-mindedly hacking away at the same downed cedar boughs I took out in our last episode. I paused to gather an armload of detritus for disposal in a handy gully near at hand, and as I stooped to grab up yet another waving frond of detached foliage, a branch whipped up and deftly separated my glasses from my face.

And then — they were gone. Not hidden, not cunningly disguised as something else, not hung from some unlikely outcropping for the crows to pick — gone. My backyard, my wonderful wonderful @#$%^!!? backyard, had made off with my visual acuity, like totally dude. And of course, without my glasses I couldn't see to find them, bwa ha ha. I groveled and groped through duff and timber, painstakingly and thoroughly dissecting every bramble-infested square inch of territory within ten feet of the Amazing Anomalous Event without success. I made Charlie Chan eyes, yanking their corners trying to tighten up my flabby corneas to some semblance of focus. I made noises like a glasses case. I cursed, I swore, I begged, I pleaded. No avail available, tough luck chuck. Like it or ship it off to Iraq, those ugly four-years-past-fashionable gold-rimmed coke-bottle-bottoms were mystery history.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who'd only own one pair of glasses. What do you take me for? After all, what in this world is more important than proper sight? No, I'd never dream of not having some kind of backup, just like I'd never dream of keeping a pair of ugly welfare goggles so far beyond their pull date it's a wonder they didn't give me salmonella. But backup I indeed had, my previous-but-one pair, an ancient and faintly ridiculous aviator-style ploughing team complete with the inevitable Thaddeusing, stick-on reading lenses that turned them into a basement tinkerer's version of bifocals, dating from the dawn of time or at least the last century. I dutifully donned them, blearily regarding the world as refracted through the late Clinton era, a most unsavory vision, and hied me to Costco, jolly jolly Costco, for replacements.

There are times when one needs to cooly and calculatedly contemplate a purchase, to pick, choose, shop, peruse and pick again until total satisfaction is achieved. This was not one of those times. I was foresighted enough to have already procured a current prescription, and from the time I hit the store entrance until I shelled out a begrudging benjamin and split, I may have spent ten minutes I'll never get back inspecting frames, but I doubt it. I was after fast, cheap and normal, in that order but with all points pertinent, and that was exactly what I got: square half-rims, no frills. Not my father's glasses, more like my grandfather's.

The sweet, sympathetic and gratifyingly efficient optical clerk took my order, laughed tastefully at my stupid little story and skirted professional discretion by relating other tales of lost glasses that came back in the laundry a year later and so forth. She expertly advised me regarding the merits of polycarbonate lenses versus glass and the value of glare coating. Then she blithely delivered the bad news: I'd be rooming with Monocle Lewinski for the next three weeks — "We're a little backed up."

I spent the next ten days in a state of mild mental retardation, groggy and distracted by insufficient astigmatic correction and combined presby- and myopia, muttering to myself like Mister Magoo. I wasn't sufficiently incapacitated to be incapable of doing my work, but I soon learned that I was as functional with those gawdawful specs off as on, maybe even more. I was trapped in a terrible half-dream of indistinction and mist, a semiotician in wonderland. And I looked like an owl — a stupid one at that.

And then, miracle of miracles, the word came: my new glasses were ready. Despite the three-week warning, the "ASAP!" note on the order had actually had an effect. It took me approximately ten seconds to get to the Costco optical department. When the smiling attendant placed the new set on my nose, it was a revelation. Suddenly, I could see. I could see! Mundane features of my surrounding stood out in startling detail and vibrant color. I felt my IQ go up thirty points.

It's been said that the eyes are the only portion of the central nervous system visible to the outside world, which is gruesome if you think about it but true none the less. Much of what is considered visual thinking takes place within the optic nerve, including a considerable amount of pattern-recognition and processing. It would hardly be a surprise, then, if clarity of vision led to clarity of thinking.

So or no, I think I just got myself a pair of genius glasses. Whether the condition is persistent or not remains to be seen.


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