I Hope Arwen Doesn’t Laugh

Yesterday I went and bought some glasses. Well, I paid for some glasses and hopefully I will get them in about two weeks. There was a two for one deal, so I bought one pair of regular lenses and one pair of sunglasses. That is what you call positive thinking, you get sunglasses and therefore Karma puts you in situations where you need sunglasses. I just hope that Karma doesn’t put me in a police line up or standing on a highway at night with a Kenworth bearing down on me at 100KPH.

So, if I have two pair of glasses, are they “glassi” or would they be “glasseses”? I vote for “glassi” because when you wear them you have a “glass eye”. Get it? Glass eye? No? Hmmmm..

The whole shopping for glasses is a difficult thing to do. You walk into this store that has quite literally thousands of pairs of frames and you somehow have to select a pair that makes you look like you. I used to buy my glasses from Sears optical for years, because they had the frames that I liked. I would go in and walk up to the counter, take off my glasses, hold them out and tell the person there that “I would like a pair of these please.”

Invariably the person would say “What colour would you like?”

I would hold out my glasses and say “I would like a pair of these please.”

“Would you like to see some different styles sir?”

This is the point that I was beginning to wonder if I were indeed speaking English or if by some miracle the seven years of French classes kicked in and I were speaking fluent Francais. That was unlikely, so I held my glasses out and said just a little slower and a tad louder “I would like a pair of these please.” It was about this time that the salesperson would understand and we would start to search for my frames. Well, unless Louise was there to help, and the process would take at least twice as long. I don’t know what the problem was, if I didn’t wear the same frames, there was a great possibility that I wouldn’t be recognized by my friends and co-workers.

The last time I went to Sears and took off my glasses, held them out and told the person there that “I would like a pair of these please.” She gave me one of those sad smiles and said “I’m sorry, but these frames are discontinued.”

I held out my glasses and said”But…I want these.” Louise took my hand and told me that wasn’t possible anymore and I would have to pick another frame. This was devastating of course, but I did manage to pick a frame that looked somewhat like my old ones, paid the money and waited until I got a call. I went in and picked them up, came home and Arwen came over to see me and my new frames. I put them on and she laughed. She laughed again. Then she said”Ahhh…They look good dad.” I think she was lying.

When she left I looked at them and wondered what the hell I could have been thinking of? When Louise came home, she looked at them and told me they weren’t the frames we ordered and marched me back to the store. It turned out that the store had put the wrong tag on the frames I ordered and promptly (two weeks) ordered me the correct pair. They have never felt right, and I am glad to be getting rid of them.

I went into Hakim Optical, held out my glasses to the lady and said” I want a pair of frames like this that are rounder, stronger and actually not like this at all!” She told me that all of the glasses they had were on display and I should take my time. I found a pair that I liked, but since it is pretty hard to see what you actually look like since your eyes are bad and you need glasses, I had them hold the frames until I could come back with Louise. We came back and quickly got rid of those frames but managed to find a pair that I liked. I went up to the counter and said “I would like this pair of frames and could you do one of the two pairs in glass and the other as sunglasses?”

She said “Wouldn’t you like a different frame for your sunglasses?”

I held out the frames and said “I would like these frames as sunglasses please.”

I hope I didn’t make a mistake, but most of all I hope Arwen doesn’t laugh.