Kathy and I had an unexpected adventure Friday night, the 26th, when we took our friends the Barrows down to Waukegan, Illinois for a meal at Sweet Tomatoes (a marvelous buffet place I have blogged about before.) It was a slow and sloppy trip down there, thanks to heavy rain and even heavier fog, but we got there safe and sound and had a lovely meal and great time together.
Unfortunately, halfway through the meal my eyeglasses basically fell apart in my hands. I’ve slept in my glasses once too often, so they were already a little bit bent and the lenses liked to pop out – but this time the right lens popped out and nothing we tried could get it back in safe and sound. We would work on it and think it was finally in – but before we could even get the glasses back on my face, the lens would pop out again, without warning. It got to be a maddening exercise in frustration- we would think we had finally got the lens back in to stay and would just be holding the glasses in hand, not even moving it, when the lens would just plop out all over again. If I didn’t think Satan had better things to do with his time, I would have said that it was a case of demon possession.
It was Kathy who realized the dire nature of the problem. The next morning was the funeral of my friend Playford, for which I would be delivering the eulogy, and she had visions of the glasses falling apart right in the middle of the eulogy- which would have been a truly awful turn of events. So she decided – and I concurred – that we had to try and get the glasses repaired right then and there – – – even though it was Friday night, 8:15, and we were down in Illinois in rather unfamiliar territory.
Given our predicament, we turned to the best problem solver in the business, my brother-in-law Mark, who fortunately was home and only too willing to hop on the computer and start googling eye places to locate our closest options. He eventually determined that our only viable option was to head west to Gurnee Mills, a gigantic outlet mall 15 miles to the west which had several eyeglass places…. So off we went, braving what all of us unanimously deemed the thickest fog any of us had ever seen. It was like driving through gray pudding, to the point where it was all but impossible to see the road signs- let alone the lane markings – but somehow my wife steered us safely to Gurnee Mills. Our first stop was Sears, but the optical department was closed. Our second stop, Cheap-O Glasses (or something like that) had no technician on duty at that hour. Just when it was starting to look like I was going to be groping my way through the rest of the weekend like Mr. Magoo, we found a place with someone who was able to repair the glasses (free of charge, I might add) who did exactly that. And I have to say that the moment when I put those glasses on and could see clearly again, it was like a chorus of nightingales began singing. Of course, once we got back in the car and were driving home, we were stuck in even thicker pea soup, so I might as well have been as blind as before, for all I could see – – – but at least I knew that what was already going to be a tough and challenging morning for me (because of my friend’s funeral) was not going to be still tougher because of spontaneously disintegrating eyeglasses.
“Was blind, but now I see!”
pictured above: the view as we headed home from our unexpected detour to Gurnee Mills. By the way, the Barrows were so understanding – – – and as usual were able to spin plenty of humor out of my predicament. That’s what friends are for.