Never Lost But Still Found
Returning to my desk, I realize something’s missing. “Honey, I don’t remember where I put my glasses,” I announce to my wife. She won’t know where they are because she’s been in the front room reading while I’ve been in the den at the computer.
“‘Where are my glasses?’ the lobotomy patient said absentmindedly,” she verbally lunges from afar.
To her credit, that was a great comeback. But I’ll keep my compliment bottled up for the time being. “Technically, if I was a lobotomy patient, I’d blissfully forget having glasses in the first place, so this conversation wouldn’t be happening,” I parry, attempting to negate her sarcasm with logic.
“But having a lobotomy wouldn’t correct your vision, so at some point you’d realize you needed glasses and here we’d be,” she ripostes, still out of sight.
My counterattack didn’t put a dimple in her vocal armor. Leery of fighting a war on two fronts, I relent to redirect my energy to the initial, pressing battle: Find the glasses I had on before getting a drink.
“Let me retrace my steps,” I acquiesce.
“Okay, I’m here if you need me,” she offers with a heavy, rhetorical overtone.
Despite compromised vision, I decline her assistance. “I’m good.”
Standing with beverage in hand, I survey the desktop, assuring my cheaters weren’t buried under the miscellaneous paperwork. Then I execute a 360-degree scan of the adjacent furnishings in the room to no avail. This means I had them on my way to the kitchen. I replicate and peruse the route taken when leaving the den.
Scouring the kitchen with the same meticulousness used previously ends with a similar outcome. Desperation creeps in which fuels an illogical urge to look in abstract locations for my wayward lenses. So, I check the refrigerator. Then the microwave. Then the bread box. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
I contemplate inspecting the garbage disposal since there’s a one in a trillion chance my glasses fell in without me noticing them departing my face or hearing them hit a drain opening they couldn’t pass through unimpeded unless folded and orientated vertically. I snap back to reality, but still flip the switch for confirmation the chamber is empty. It is.
Hoping a view from a different perspective will yield better results, I backtrack to the den. Then repeat this roundtrip. Neither are fruitful. So, my glasses are lost forever, sucked into some transportational vortex to another dimension. Out of frustration, I put my hands on my head and feel the telltale plastic frame that’s been securely hitchhiking there the entire time.
I let out a sigh/“Dammit” combination.
From the other room, “What now?”
“Never mind, found them.”
“Good for you.”
I slide my specs into their rightful position on my nose. At this advanced stage of my life, would LASIK surgery be beneficial to eliminate the need for glasses, thus avoiding the possibility of repeating anguished searching in the future? Maybe. But first, where in the Hell did I leave my drink?