Froggy's World - Alms for Oblivion (Weblog)

Snazzy spectacles a sight to behold
2nd May, 2007

The face behind the desk was suffused with a welcoming smile as I pushed open the door and nodded in acknowledgement. From the walls, hundreds of sightless eyes stared down as I made my way towards the receptionist.
   "Hello, Mr Willems. Nice to see you again," she beamed.
   "I need to make an appointment," I sighed.
   "Again?" she asked.
   "Again," I said.
As she called up my file, I walked over to the display of frames suspended in racks on the mirrored walls and looked at the shapes and then the prices marked discreetly inside the wings. Moaning inwardly at the numbers after the dollar signs, I made the appointment, took the reminder card she handed me and shuffled back out onto the street.
On a Friday afternoon two weeks previously, we'd checked in to an apartment for a weekend away. Collapsing onto the bed like a human beanbag, I'd reached for the newspaper and my glasses, for heaven is that place where you can read a paper in undisturbed tranquillity with a weekend of doing very little stretching ahead. I reached for the glasses case, flipped it open and felt inside. Empty. I checked my pockets, swore silently, and upended my overnight bag.
   "What's wrong?" asked my wife.
   "Nothing," I snarled in the way someone who has just sliced off a finger with a bread knife might say "nothing".
I grabbed the car keys, went down to the garage and ransacked the car. Nothing. So I sat back on the bed and stared at the blurred haze of grey newspaper type.
   "Again?" inquired my wife.
   "Again," I said in despair.
Then I had a thought. It happens infrequently and often presages disaster but this one showed promise. I had a friend with the ocular acuity of a bat but who refused to spend money on optometrists, opting instead to buy non-prescription glasses off the shelf from chemist's shops.
Monday was a long way away and a weekend without reading newspapers was not a prospect worth entertaining, so I went shopping for glasses. "What do you think?" I asked when I returned. I had to wait some time for a reply as my wife spent the next few minutes rolling around on the carpet paralysed with hysteria.
   "You look like Edna Everage!" she gasped.
   "They didn't have any blokey ones," I sniffed, holding up the cat's-eye shaped lenses and their mauve tinted frames. "And they only cost $19.95," I said.
   "Really," she hooted and, overcome with what I presumed was threatened incontinence, ran off to the bathroom.
In the weeks since then I have searched the office and our apartment. Nothing. The horribly expensive designer glasses had vanished. A week after buying my Edna Everage $20 specials, I left them in a cab. Two pairs in two weeks. I was on a roll. So I went to another chemist's shop and spent another $20, this time on large, black "I-am-not-a-cross-dresser" frames.
   "Do these make me look intelligent?" I asked my wife.
   "No," she said.
"These would suit you," said the optometrist when I returned for my appointment. Peering through my $20 professional glasses, I checked the price tag - $720.
"I don't know," I said, casting desperately about for something half the price. I was tempted to stay with the chemist's shop variety but was afraid I'd end up carrying a white cane with a labrador as a constant companion.
   "Why don't you just buy a big magnifying glass and hang it around your neck on a piece of string?" offered my wife.
   "At least I wear my glasses," I replied tartly, for I had discovered a number of years ago that while she can read fine print without the benefit of optometry, in a movie theatre she has trouble distinguishing between Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman. She's still wondering why he didn't win an Oscar for Moulin Rouge.
I've ordered new glasses - horribly expensive ones. Good news for my friendly optometrist and the city's long-sighted cab drivers.

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