20/20 Vision
As one of my favorite Karen Carpenter Christmas songs goes, “Greeting cards have all been sent …” But not in the Nagasawa house. Not a chance.
But there’s an explanation for that. I don’t know about your family, but in my house both my wife and I wear glasses for reading. I wear prescription glasses and I have exactly one pair. On the other hand, my wife can wear those generic reading glasses that you can buy at Longs or Kmart, and she has about 67 pairs. Or at least it feels like 67 pairs, because she has a pair or two in nearly every room of the house – and in each of our cars, several at her office and probably a pair in each of her purses.
The trouble is, whenever she needs to read or write something, she cannot find a pair to save her life. She never puts them back in any orderly fashion, so when she needs to find them, there is a major search matched only by the Coast Guard.
We find them in the couch, under the bed or in any number of random places she leaves them, including on top of her head. The other night she decided to write out our family Christmas cards but couldn’t because she didn’t have her glasses. Of course, her anger and frustration are immediately transferred to me because I always know exactly where my single pair of reading glasses are at all times. I treat them like the Secret Service might treat the president’s briefcase with the nuclear launch codes – never too far away from me and I know exactly where it is.
Anyway, she was frantically looking for a pair in the house the other night. Her frustration was multiplied because she had just used them, put them down and then they seemed to disappear into thin air. I immediately started lecturing her about how ridiculous it is, seeing as how she has a billion pairs. She gave me “the look,” and I stopped any sound coming from my mouth.
Minding my own business, I sat in my recliner to watch TV. Just then, our dog Buddy walked by. He had one arm of her glasses in his mouth but it had flipped up over his nose so it looked like he was wearing them like Mr. Peabody of the cartoon Sherman and Peabody. If you’re younger than 40, Google it. Buddy stopped and looked at me. I looked back and said, “You’re on your own, four-eyes.”
rnagasawa@midweek.com
