LOST GLASSES, VIBRATORS, AND DINKBABIES

My daughter lost her glasses ... five days ago.  She had them at work and then she didn't, and, although everyone has been helping her search for them, she suspects they landed in some stuff she was throwing out at her job when she leaned over and the glasses fell out of her work shirt.

I have been slightly nervous about her driving without the glasses, as she tells me things like:

"I can see all right.  I can see red lights and green lights and street lights.  They all look like giant snowflakes! I can't see people in the crosswalks, but I'll see them fine when they hit the windshield."

She has a pair of old prescription sunglasses that she can wear, but wearing them inside buildings and while driving at night makes her look like she's related to Vito Corleone.  Well, she is Sicilian, so I suppose this is possible.  Finally, by Saturday she has exhausted the search and decided it's time to get new glasses.  Besides, she got a new RX last September that she never filled, anyway, so it's time.

We know the doctor has a distant office open on Saturdays, but no one is answering the phone, so we drive up there to find the place deserted.  The only option left is to go to Lenscrafters, where she got her last pair, and possibly get the old 'script refilled with glasses that won't do her optimal good.  (Or wait until next week.)

When we get to the store, the girl, who is clearly the manager, attempts to call the doctor.  "They have an office that's open on Saturdays," she tells us cheerfully.

"We already called," we inform her, "and already went up there. It's closed today."

She tries the main number anyway, and she actually manages to reach someone somewhere and have the new prescription faxed over.  In the meantime, we start frame shopping.  My daughter looks good in every frame she tries on, but we narrow it down to frames that compliment her eyes and do not interrupt her eyebrow line as she has exceptionally nice eyebrows.  Surprise, the frames are similar to her last pair.  Apparently, she knows what looks good on her and is consistent.

As for sunglasses frames (because if you're going to update regular specs, update the extras, too), she looks pretty fab in all of those, too.  At one point, though, I have that song by Boston band Human Sexual Response running through my head, "I wanna be Jackie Onassis; I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses; I wanna be Jackie Onassis, oh yeah..."  So, I say to my daughter, "You look like Jackie Onassis!"

"Who?"

Oh, dear lord, I am so old.  Old as dirt.  "President Kennedy's wife," I say, because that really is the point of reference.  Unless you're Greek or over fifty, you probably shouldn't know who Ari Onassis is, anyway, or that Jackie married the old crone.

Once the frames are picked out and her face is all measured, my daughter and I go shopping around the mall.  She buys some fabulous clothes and I am writhing with jealousy over how fabulous she looks in everything because I can never find anything that fits or looks decent, and everything she touches is marvelous.  She has an entirely new wardrobe in the time it takes me to try on forty pairs of pants to find one or two that sort of fit.

We hit a couple more stores for the heck of it and to kill some time.  Spencer's, back in the day, was a fun store.  It had all kinds of interesting stuff from Mad Libs to velvet Elvis posters to black lights to incense to t-shirts to dirty gag gifts.  Apparently, things have changed and they have become Towers News.  "Want to look in Spencer's?" I ask.

My daughter stops, wrinkles her face up, and deadpans, "Why?  Do you need a vibrator?"

I deadpan back by smiling and starting to walk into the store.

"Mom! Really?!"

Seriously, though, if I did, as if I'd pick one out with my daughter.  Come on, now.  I do have an ounce of class.

We continue on our way, finally getting back to Lenscrafters where the line is about as long as trying to buy a beer in the middle of a ball game.  It takes twenty minutes to get waited on and twenty seconds to pick up and fit the glasses.  Finally, my daughter can see again, so we head over to Bertucci's for lunch where she will be able to read the menu.

We get a table right away in the bar, right next to a cranky toddler who has no business being in a bar nor being cranky since he is being fed and presumably does not have shit in his diaper.  Mom seems disinterested in entertaining him, so he resorts to whimpering.  I like children, but I'm ready to put a fork through his mother's eyeball by the time our drinks arrive.  My daughter orders a Sam's Summer Ale, and I order a small bottle of Prosecco.

The waitress unscrews the bottle cap for me and says, "Would you like me to fill you up?"

My daughter hears instead, "Would you like me to feel you up," and almost falls off her tall chair when I respond with a polite yes, thank you.

After the waitress leaves the table and my wine glass is bubbling with white wonderfulness, my daughter shakes her head and tells me what she thought she heard.  "Holy crap," she chortles.  "First the vibrator, then she wants to feel you up.  I thought the whole world had gone crazy just because I could see again."

Thank goodness she can see again because the fork in her place setting is filthy.  We get that replaced promptly, but then when our pizza arrives, we are forced to reuse our salad plates.  Damnit, she's right.  The whole world is going crazy.

Finally, the mom sitting next to us gets up and takes Mr. Crankypants out to the mall, leaving what looks like her father (or her much older husband or just some random guy she happened to pick up somewhere) to pay the bill.  Excellent strategic move.  Perhaps she had been pinching the toddler under the table, waiting for the exact moment to say, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Fred, pay the damn bill while I take Dinkbaby outside."

We finish our lunch and head back toward home, my daughter anxious to get back to her life post-Mr. Pine.  Yup, like the Onassis reference, you have to be over fifty.  Mr. Pine's Mixed-Up Signs is an old kids' book about a sign painter who loses his glasses and puts up all the wrong signs all over town before finally discovering his dog lounging in its dog house, wearing Mr. Pine's missing glasses.  My daughter doesn't have a dog to blame, but she can finally get back to seeing the world clearly -- the whole world that has gone crazy in the short time she could only see colored snowflakes and people hitting her windshield.