I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

Wow!  It’s amazing what happens when I actually have glasses that are closer to my eyesight.

Let’s face it, middle age ain’t no picnic.  Things start to go that shouldn’t be going anywhere.  Or, rather, things stop going where they’re supposed to and when they’re supposed to – things like knees and hips and lower backs.  Countless times I’ve been in front of the class when an attempt to turn becomes nothing more than an awkward semi-movement accompanied by a loud snapping sound, sometimes followed by a grimace and an occasional “Ow.”

Students:  “What was that noise?”

Me:  “My right hip.”

Out of all the things that have started to take their own siestas, my eyesight bothers me the most.  It started a few years ago when I noticed that I couldn’t thread a needle anymore.  No matter how close I got to the needle’s eye with my eyes, I couldn’t focus.  Turns out what I needed to do was pull the needle away from my face.  Far away.  Far as in “my arms just aren’t long enough” away.

Years ago the eye doctor told me that this is normal for “people (my) age.”  If I could see him, I would’ve smacked him.  So I started wearing reading glasses.  I started with +1.25.  This was about the time I had foot surgery and couldn’t move easily, so I ordered six cheap pairs and left them in various places all over the house for easy access.  Then I moved up to +1.50.  Then +1.75.

I noticed at school that I couldn’t read the text books easily and that my reading glasses were starting to help me with short distances, too, like watching television.  This summer while sewing beanbags for my daughter and son-in-law’s Cornhole game, I had to beg for help with the needle-threading and even broke out a magnifying glass.

Which brings me to the present.  I realize that it has been years, maybe six, since my last eye exam, so I call and make an appointment.  I go through the whole exam, the air blasts to the eyeballs (I like that one), then the eye drops to dilate the pupils (I don’t like that one), followed by bright lights and lots of attempts to read lines of blurry letters and numbers.

The end result: Not only am I blinder than I ever suspected, I have astigmatism in my left eye.  The bad news is the lenses to correct all of my middle-aged eye issues are expensive and take a few weeks to get used to.  Since my insurance doesn’t cover glasses, and since I don’t have weeks to get used to the vertigo of progressive lenses, I ask what my other options are.

This is where I get the good news.  Actually, I get two pieces of good news.  The first piece of good news is that I still fall within the legal limits to drive without distance glasses, and, truth be told, I can see just fine if I’m looking beyond the GPS.  The second piece of good news is that I can get away with reading glasses just a little bit longer.  Silly me, I figure I can get away with the ones I have at home, maybe even sneak up to +2.00.

Nope.  One eye is +2.75 and the other is +3.00.  No wonder I couldn’t thread a needle with +1.75 lenses. 

This revelation sends me to my favorite store for reading glasses – Christmas Tree Shop.  I decide to buy in bulk since glasses are 3 for $12.  I buy myself six pairs, just like I did when I was housebound in a cast when this whole fiasco started with my eyes in the first place.  I buy all +2.75, and not a moment too soon.  As I am helping College Boy get ready for his senior year, he needs a couple of things sewn and repaired.   Nervously I put on my new glasses, sit down at the sewing machine, and lament the fact that I will need to change thread colors not once, but twice. 

I look at the machine and realize … I can see the eye of the needle.  For the first time since 2008, I can see the damn hole, and I have no problem threading the needle … two times … both on the first tries.

Amazing. 

I’m so incredibly excited that I start grabbing some stuff that has been in my “desperately needs to be sewn or repaired or altered” pile for years.  I actually alter three shirts that needed some minor stuff sewn, and I change the thread for a third time … on the first try.

If I’m this productive with plain old reading glasses, imagine how my life will change when I finally break down and get myself those progressive lenses.  Watch out, people!  My driving might even improve.  (Okay, that last one might not be related to my eyesight since I don’t think corrective lenses will ease my lead-foot issue.)  Next thing you know I’ll read a book just for pleasure instead of attempting to decipher a text book for school.

Now, if I could just do something about the snap-crackle-pop of my hips and knees, I might be onto something.

MARKET BASKET RETURNS

Good-freakin-gravy, it’s about time.

It’s Friday evening, and I’ve spent the day running around getting some last minute items for the kiddo to go back for his senior year at college.  Still some items need to be purchased – laundry detergent, paper towels, garbage bags.  Everything else has been taken care of, for the most part, anyway.

Today has been like the Odyssey of stores.  Might as well cap it off with the true Crown Jewel: a trip to the newly reunited Market Basket.

For any American living in a cave, non-union employees and everyday customers of the multi-billion-dollar grocery store chain called Market Basket spent six weeks bringing its crooked and greedy co-CEO’s and owners to their knees.  The rich board of directors underestimated the loyalty of staff and patrons when it fired and disowned a beloved CEO (a family member who had recently been ousted by the BOD) because the board felt its members should be making even more money rather than taking care of workers and customers.  After a long standoff and the revenue loss of approximately $10 million per day (that’s right – per DAY) times six weeks, after a month and a half of absolutely empty stores in support of a regional boycott, it is finally safely to resume shopping at the best-run grocery store around.

We don’t need much, and we don’t really need any meat or veggies, so we head to the closest Market Basket – at the North Andover mall (though it’s actually in Lawrence).  Upon walking through the doors for the first time since school ended in June, the first thing that hits us is the party atmosphere.  The workers are smiling and going about their business, and patrons are chatting in the aisles.  The night manager smiles as I welcome him back.  “It feels like a store opening,” he admits.

(Sky over parking lot)

In a way, it is a store opening.  It’s a store opening that will soon be free of the corporate greed that caused average Americans to take a stand against bad treatment and corporate raiders.  Soon all of the stores will be restocked and as ready for the customers as we are to be returning.

Welcome back, Market Basket.  But if you ever leave me again, we’re through.

A TALL TALE, MAYBE EVEN GRANDE, OF STARBUCKS COFFEE

I don’t get it. 

Do you get it? 

Who gets it? 

I know I don’t. 

I don’t get it.

What is the attraction to Starbucks?

            Tall, Grande, Venti, Trenta,

                        And Short, if you’re smart enough to ask,

                                    Maybe save yourself a zillion bucks

                                                On over-priced miniscule cups of coffee.

I ask the server to explain to me

            Something about their products.

                        I’m not a coffee drinker, and

                                    I’m a novice at ordering Starbucks,

                                                So she’d better try and sell me something.

(I know that she should be explaining

            Starbucks products and tempting me with

                        Tales of how good their coffee, tea, et al, all taste.

                                    I know she should be giving me the hard sale with soft chatter

                                                Because I used to sell coffee at rival Dunkin Donuts.)

Instead, my companion and I are treated like idiots.

            “We don’t have peppermint NOW!”

                        Spoken in a petulant, unhelpful, chastising, superior tone,

                                    Then she stands there like a brain-robbed automaton

                                                And dismisses us like the plague of locusts we must be.

We finally order some shit

            (If we are treated like shit

By a piece of shit,

we must be in Shit Country)

                                                And are stunned by the science of it all.

Volume.

            It’s all about volume.

                        Clearly, Tall and Grande are within milliliters of each other.

                                    Finally, a server with a smile and a brain

                                                Comes over to offer us samples of something pumkin-y.

This … this I clearly would’ve ordered,

Maybe even Venti,

Had that first bitch

                                    Bothered to explain that

                                                “We have pumpkin NOW!”

We line up the cups we have:

            Grande, Tall, and sample size

                        And decide that soon, very soon,

                                    The sample size will probably be the secret Short

                                                While the tall shrinks, and so on.

Truth be told, the Passion Fruit Iced Tea?

            It isn’t anything to get passionate about.

                        It’s about as exciting as Kool-Aid.

                                    Really, really, REALLY expensive Kool-Aid.

                                                “We have imitation Kool-Aid NOW!” shouts the server.

And I don’t get it.

            Maybe you get it.

                        Perhaps you mainline coffee.

                                    I know I don’t mainline coffee.

                                                I … just … don’t … get … it.

DEATH AND WAL-MART

Good gawd, I’m going to die of old age waiting in this line. 

Today my son and I are on a scavenger hunt for storage bins that he can use at college.  This is his senior year, so durability isn’t a real concern, but price is.  No sense in investing big bucks in something that only needs to last for nine months, so we end up at Wal-Mart in Salem, NH.

After picking out three plastic bins and a bath mat (green, so it looks like grass from the lacrosse field), we go stand in one of the shortest lines.  Right here and now, we should realize something is wrong.  Why is this line shorter than the others?

It doesn’t take long for the answer to become obvious: The cashier is a chatter.  She chats with people after touching every single item.  This is awesome for people like us, whose items consist of three large bins, a bath mat, and some assorted toiletries.  But the people two carriages in front of us are also doing their grocery shopping, and they have yogurt.  Lots and lots of yogurt, all in little individual containers. 

Rather than ringing in the yogurts as a bulk item (you know, scan one item and key in “times twelve”), the cashier stops to talk as she touches each … and … every … single … yogurt … container.  And it’s not just the yogurts.  She pauses after each item, scanning, chatting, then slowly putting the items into bags.  She repeats this same process probably forty times while we are all bored and chomping at the bit trying desperately to move the line forward.

By the time she gets to our stuff, we put the small items first and push the bins forward.  Any time the belt stops so she can chit-chat, we push the items forward so she has to keep scanning lest the items scan themselves. 

We make it out of the line about twenty minutes after we stepped into the shortest line in the store with the world’s slowest cashier.  As we pass by the next few register, a woman on a cell phone swings her carriage right into my path.  My son balks and throws some words her way.  I make a huge gesture with my hand and start yelling, “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!”  Then loudly enough for her to hear out of the ear that doesn’t have her phone stuck to it, but quietly enough that she must assume I am not truly talking to her, I say, “She should get the hell off her cell phone.”

In the end, I don’t die of old age while waiting in line, but I do come close to dying from a perforated spleen when I am damn-near attacked by the moronic woman’s carriage at the check-out.  Let this be a lesson to me – Apparently, Wal-Mart is hazardous to my health.