The Great Glasses Hunt

People ask me why I don’t just get contacts. I tell them contacts are for people who trust themselves, and I have met myself, so no thank you. Last year I bought six pairs of reading glasses. Six. That’s not shopping, that’s a hostage negotiation with my own eyesight. I figured if I flooded the market, one pair would surface eventually, like if you buy enough lottery tickets you’re bound to win something. Instead I created an ecosystem. My glasses now have their own migratory patterns, their own weather systems, their own passive-aggressive relationship with my car seat cushions.

My Reading Glasses Have Left Me For Someone Younger

I’m convinced my reading glasses are having an affair with a man in his thirties who doesn’t need them but wears them anyway because they look smart. Meanwhile I’m standing in my kitchen holding a soup can four inches from my nose, whispering low sodium or regular, just tell me, and the can says nothing, because cans don’t talk, but also because I genuinely cannot read the label.

You’d think six pairs would mean redundancy, backup, a safety net. Instead it means six separate crime scenes. Every jacket I own is evidence locker. Every cupholder in my car is a graveyard. I once found a pair inside a bag of frozen peas, and I want to be very clear, I do not remember putting them there, the peas do not remember either, we were both equally confused at two in the morning.

Reading Glasses Have Formed Their Own Union

I think my glasses talk to each other when I’m not around. I think they’ve unionized. I think there’s a shop steward pair sitting in my glovebox right now, holding a meeting, discussing hazard pay for being sat on, debating whether they’re legally required to appear when I actually need them or whether that counts as overtime. Somewhere a foreman pair is muttering let him find the receipt if he’s so smart, and honestly, fair point.

The worst part is the moment of discovery. You finally find a pair, on your own head, right where they’ve been the whole time, resting on your skull like a tiny betrayal, and the crowd of onlookers, meaning my wife, meaning anyone within twelve feet, does that laugh. Not a mean laugh. A we’ve seen this documentary before laugh. A nature-special laugh, like they’re watching a very slow, very confused animal in its natural habitat.

A Field Guide to Where Reading Glasses Go to Hide

Let me save you some research. If you too have declared war on your own eyesight and lost, here’s where they hide, ranked by cruelty. The junk drawer, obviously, nestled between a dead phone charger and a single AA battery of unknown charge. The center console of the car, wedged under a receipt from a restaurant that closed three years ago. The bathroom shelf, behind the mouthwash, judging you silently. And my personal favorite, pushed up onto my own forehead, while I frantically pat down my pockets for twenty minutes like I’m defusing a bomb.

At my age, hide-and-seek has consequences. When I was a kid it meant somebody’s little brother crying behind the couch. Now it means me, an adult man with a mortgage, on my knees at 5 AM patting down couch cushions like I’m frisking furniture for contraband, whispering come on, come on to an inanimate object that has never once answered me, and frankly, at this point, I respect its boundaries.

I’ve started buying reading glasses in bulk packs now, the kind with a little cardboard tray, twelve for the price of eight, because I’ve accepted the math. Some percentage of any batch is simply going to be sacrificed to the universe, offered up to the car, the couch, the mysterious drawer dimension. It’s not shopping anymore. It’s tribute. An offering to whatever deity is in charge of small plastic objects and my dwindling patience.

And here’s the cruelest twist. I don’t even need them for everything. Just small print, menus, medicine bottles, and text messages from my son that he insists are not that small. So half my life I see perfectly fine, and the other half I’m one blurry sentence from ordering the wrong thing at a restaurant out of pure stubborn pride, squinting at a menu like it personally wronged me, refusing to ask the waiter for help because grown men do not admit defeat to a piece of laminated cardstock.

So if anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be the guy patting down his own pockets in a parking lot, having a very serious conversation with himself about accountability. And if you find a stray pair that isn’t yours, do the right thing. Check the couch cushions first. Odds are they’re mine, and odds are, I’ve already given up.