By Rodger Morrow (with apologies to James Thurber) for Beaver County Business
Listen to a podcast discussion about this article.
It is a well-established fact—confirmed by optometrists, neurologists, and people who live alone with very large dogs—that the average adult spends one-third of his life searching for his glasses. The other two-thirds he spends pretending not to have lost them.
This most recent episode of visual disarray took place, as these things often do, in my one- bedroom apartment in Bridgewater, Pennsylvania—a town where you can misplace your keys, your mind, and your mail, but never your neighbor’s opinion. Our borough is too small to have its own post office, so we’re served by the one in nearby Beaver, which means that even my mail has a better social life than I do.
The morning began like most of mine do: a cup of black coffee, a bowl of homemade Greek yogurt, and a large dog named Seamus giving me the look that says, “Whatever you’ve lost, I didn’t take it, but I’ll help you look—with judgment.”
I reached for my glasses and found air. This in itself was not alarming. The alarm comes thirty seconds later, when air remains the only thing I’ve found.
First comes denial: They’re probably on the nightstand.
Then anger: Why does everything in this apartment vanish like it’s in a David Copperfield routine?
Then bargaining: Seamus, if you return them unharmed, I’ll increase your biscuit allowance. Then depression, followed by a resigned squint.
I began the standard recon. Bathroom counter: no. Kitchen table: no. On my face? Sadly, also no. I checked my pockets, my coat pockets, and the mysterious pocket in my bathrobe that once produced a Canadian coin and a single packet of soy sauce.
No glasses.
Seamus remained expressionless, which I found suspicious. I’ve seen that dog bark at doorbells on television, but when I’m blind and unraveling, he adopts the passive neutrality of a Swiss diplomat.
I scanned the apartment using what limited vision remained. Everything was a gentle blur, like a watercolor painting of someone else’s life. I knocked over a potted plant trying to examine the coffee table, and very nearly spooned yogurt into the houseplant instead of the bowl.
Eventually—somewhere between despair and second coffee—I opened the refrigerator. There they were.
Resting nobly beside a jar of Dijon mustard and a container of blueberries I had no recollection of buying. My glasses. Cold, foggy, and unrepentant.
I stood there for a while, staring at them as if they might explain themselves. Had I opened the fridge to retrieve something and absentmindedly set them down? Had Seamus finally developed opposable thumbs and a sense of humor?
We may never know.
I placed the glasses gently on my face, where they clung with the reluctant dignity of someone returning from a weekend in Cleveland.
Vision returned. So did shame.
I’ve since tried to implement systems. I bought a glasses tray. I created a designated “glasses zone” on my bookshelf. I even wrote a note and stuck it to the refrigerator door: “They are not in here. Stop checking.”
It hasn’t worked.
Because the problem isn’t where you put your glasses. The problem is where your mind went when you put them there.
And in my case, it appears my mind took a short vacation to the produce drawer—possibly with a layover in the freezer.
