As I'd left my car to board the van, I thought I'd shoved my reading spectacles into my right inside jacket pocket, and after the van was loaded and was pulling out for our trip to Chapel Hill, I was rustling about to start reading. But I wasn't finding those glasses. I was sure I'd put them in that inside pocket. Not there! Not in my canvas bag! Not on the floor of the van! Not on the seat!
"Oh, no," I said, "I think I left my glasses back there...."
"Back where?," the driver said. She was in the left lane on top of the overpass, about to turn onto the freeway.
"In the parking lot."
She kindly got out of the turn lane and made the first convenient (and legal) U-turn (a police car was behind us).
I checked my car, even the driver's side, which I was "sure" wasn't the side where I shoved the glasses into my pocket. No glasses on either side.
In a fidget, I got back on the van, and we started to drive out again, me once again looking all over for the glasses, even checking my jacket for the sixth or eighth time. Fellow riders were muttering helpfully. "Do you need them at work?"
"Maybe you need to drive today, Morris," the driver suggested.
"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "I've got to get to the bottom of this."
She backed up and let me out again.
At home, I checked the car again and went inside and checked all over there (even though I was "sure" this shouldn't be necessary). Then I went back out to the car again, and this time when I opened the passenger door, I saw the black case, exactly the same color as the seat, except for its shininess in this better light (the sun was farther up by now).
I went back into the house and switched the glasses to a reddish case before preparing to drive to Chapel Hill.
About to start the car, I checked my book on tape and saw that I had less than half of Side 4 left. Better go back in for the next tape, I thought, and did. Wasn't it ironic, befuddled me listening to an intellectual book about the production of mind and morality by the blind forces of nature? [The first book currently listed under "Most Recently Read Books."]
On the van ride home yesterday, I had fallen asleep before we even left the hospital parking lot. (Almost everyone else who rides the van works in various departments connected with the hospital or the medical school.) I'd woken up only once before we got to Mebane, when Theresa on the same bench poked me to let me know that I was falling over onto her.
When I woke up in Mebane, Theresa had moved to the bench in back. I guess I'd kept falling over in my stupor. I don't think I'd ever been so tired on the van before. It felt as though I should go to bed immediately after dinner, and I would have if dinner hadn't revived me sufficiently to watch a movie with my wife (see "Most Recently Watched [or Unwatchably Bad] Movies & TV Series").
And now this morning, this comedy of errors. I'll look for good things that might be possible because of having driven to work.
In the meantime, "Poor Morris, bless his heart."
Bless your heart Uncle Mo ! Glasses sure drive me crazy having to be dependent on them but I sure am now
ReplyDeletefor reading etc. Luckily I can still use cheap readers. Have a great afternoon.
Love Dawn
I read the first paragraph of the post this morning, then got interrupted. Went back and just finished it up. I could almost feel the frustration of not knowing where the glasses were located, combined with the give me a break moment in finding them in the car with the better light.
ReplyDelete"Bless your heart." Thinking back, I remember my mom saying this. Not very often, but often enough for me to remember it and hyperlink to the video flashback of her saying it, in her quiet voice.
Thinking about how I have heard the phrase used, it seems it can either mean thank you for doing something nice for me, or faux thoughts of pity for someone's condition ("That Joe is a photography nerd, bless his heart he can't help it").
Regardless, thanks for the brain break today. Glad you found your glasses.
Of course, I was thinking of "bless his heart" in that second, he's just doing the best he can, sense. It is so true: I am just doing the best I can <smile>!
ReplyDeleteAnd, Joe, That first sense is indeed a lovely use of the saying. I can "hear" my mother (your great grandmother) saying it too. It really sums up (for me) the heart-swelling compassion that I feel for other critters (other people and non-human animals as well). That is, the doing-something-nice that they do for me (for us) is to exist and enrich our world with their wondrousness, in all their deserving-as-much-as-we.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this very neat update on live. (daily life) I am also glad you found the glasses. I too left my glasses in our car not to long ago and finally figure out that's where they were. Have a better Thursday. Its raining here tonight, Wed 3-24-10. Bless all of our heart's, Lov, Bruce xoxxo
ReplyDeleteI wished I was a better speller. Bruce
ReplyDeleteOne practical problem for everyone, especially as we age and need more light, is that recognizable colors are limited, and when one's spectacles case and car seat covers are the same color, then the case can more easily hide from us.
ReplyDeleteMy wife's suggestion that I stick yellow polka dots or stripes on my cases is under consideration. Maybe on my wallet too....
At least you recognized later that you had misspelled a few things! I generally run preview and double-check before I publish, but mistakes still get through.
That's nature's way, though. It checks for errors in genetic replication, but errors still get through and the useful ones survive through natural selection.
LOL I wish my sunglasses would have turned up on the car seat. I think they are gone, gone, gone. It sounds like you could benefit from being more present--getting out of auto pilot and being more conscious of what you are doing and where you are putting things??? just a thought.
ReplyDeletePG, of course you're right. Everyone can enjoy more efficiency and even more joy of living by being more "in the moment," more mindful, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, in my case, I seem to seriously need to avoid rushing. In the missing spectables case [double-entendre intended], I was (as I said in the post) "sure" that I'd at least taken a stab at putting the glasses into my inside right jacket pocket, and that I'd done so on the passenger side, not on the driver's side. I guess I must have been pretty mindful, just to have that sense? So, the lesson, for me in this case, would seem to be to place more trust in my own sense (of sureness) and be more thorough in sensorily checking it out. The problem in this case, after all, was that I couldn't see the case. When I finally did see it (later at home, with more daylight), it was right there in full view between the side of the passenger seat and the door. I might have felt for it the first time I looked (after being brought back to the parking lot by the van driver) rather than just hurriedly check with my eyes (at the time I was prone to rush even more, because everyone was waiting for me and I felt pressured—I was "in a fidget," as I said).
People need to be more patient with people who are becoming old and doddery, even the old, doddery people with themselves! Even that is a sort of mindfulness, is it not?
When you forwarded me a link to this post with the comment that you were "falling apart," I at first thought it meant that you had some medical/dieting malfunction. If misplacing glasses is as bad as it gets then you are doing just fine.
ReplyDeleteI have five pairs of glasses: most-of-the-time transition progressive; computer/reading bi-focal; long/reading bi-focal; long transition for outdoor activities; long sports glasses with inserts (clear, amber, brown, dark) mostly used for skiing. I've been thinking of getting a sixth pair to wear permanently around my neck to use to find one of the other five when the need arises.
Ha! I'd say that my glasses problem can hardly be seen as a problem at all in comparison to you. Five pairs, now possibly six! I can't imagine. Going to a meeting where I have to look at a big screen and also at handouts, switching back and forth between glasses, is very stressful and practically difficult (for me, at any rate).
ReplyDeleteI guess my apparently greater sensitivity (or delicacy, or something) when it comes to simple physical tasks (are they really that simple? are they really just "physical," and not perhaps more neurological?) might go some distance to explain, though, why I write of all of this as "falling apart," however misleading that might be to people without my apparently frailer sensibilities.
I've long known that I'm a wimp.
LOL. I was going to say maybe you could get a glass's leash and just leave the glasses around your neck. I grew to like that with my sunglasses and it worked very well until the time I did not put them back in their case when I did take them off... :)
ReplyDeleteI was on auto pilot driving to work today and forgot to go "the other way" to avoid road construction. I had completely forgotton that I had decided yesterday that I should do that today!
Which pair would I leash, if not both? I've seen two- (or even three-) dog leashes, but only single-spectacles ones. Maybe I should google it.
ReplyDelete