You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Vanity vs Clarity!
Yeah, I said it.
So I’m waiting in line at the pharmacy. The guy ahead of me is buying black market Viagra and Indonesian Opium.
I don’t know that Publix Pharmacy actually sells these items but it makes me laugh so bear with me as I take a few creative liberties.
Anyway, I’m waiting on the guy ahead of me to buy stool softener, or Cialis, or rectal itch ointment or boil remover.
I don’t want to get to close to the guy. Last thing I need is monkey virus.
I look to my right and I see the magnification glasses.
I am usually repulsed by this display like superman is repulsed by kryptonite. It makes me think of getting old. It makes me think of people waiting in line at the social security office.
But on this day, with Ebola man ahead of me and some time to kill, I stare at the display. The glasses have words like 1.25 X and 1.75 X. I don’t exactly know what this means in scientific jargon, but I suspect the higher the number the more likely I will be able to look through people’s clothes.
Remember X ray glasses sold in Bazooka Joe bubble gum comics? Suddenly 1.25X sounds cool.
So I look around to see who is watching. I am discreet. I try and stretch, slightly, adding a yawn for good measure. I tip my neck, and roll my eyes.
Nobody is watching. Store security and other shoppers seem to have their attention on the man in the pharmacy line who is oozing some sort of phosphorescent green scuzz from his pores.
Bodily fluid leak in aisle 3.
Ha. Just taking some creative liberties, right?
So I reach over for the 1.25X and stare at them, as if this is the optical missing link.
The glasses are so UNCOOL. They remind me of Ben Franklin. I feel like flying a kite in an electrical storm. I want to legislate and date French whores. I suddenly hate these old man glasses. I stare at them, holding them awkwardly, waiting for them to burn my fingers like a Crucifix hanging around a Vampire’s neck.
Nothing. No flames. No pain.
Like a lizard, my eyes scan the area. A 5-year-old boy is standing near his mother’s shopping cart.
His face is expressionless. He is staring at me.
I can read his thoughts.
Put them on old man. Go ahead. I see you. Yeah you’re old. Yeah I can see. I can see great. 20 /20 vision old man. What’s the problem? Can’t see? Put them on your face. You think you look like Ben Franklin? Whose Ben Franklin? Whoever he is I bet he is ugly and blind.
I suddenly don’t like this kid with the perfect blue eyes staring at me like I’m shopping for Mexican black market Viagra.
I put the glasses on my face. I catch a glimpse of myself in the tilt a whirl mirror on the display.
Oh my God, I have become that guy.
I am about to take them off when a crazy thing happens.
CLARITY.
Oh my God. Is this what the world looks like now? When the hell did this happen?
I put my cell phone in front of my face.
Suddenly the 2 inch screen is precisely in focus.
I don’t have to move the phone 18 inches this way or that to find the best focal length. The word THE looks like the word THE and not some enigmatic hieroglyphics on the side of a UFO hiding under a pyramid in the sand.
I am astounded. I feel like the little boy with the cochlear implants who hears music for the first time.
OK, it is not that big a deal. Again, literary license to blow something out of proportion.
But it is pretty amazing. It’s like drinking sweet tea after a life time of unsweetened tea. Wow, that is a lame metaphor, but it’s all I got.
I read a text message from a week ago.
I laugh out loud. “Wow. That’s what that said?”
Somehow, over a lifetime, my eyes have gone to hell. And sometime over a lifetime, I just got use to hell looking like the inside of a coke bottle smeared with turkey grease.
I smile as I stare at the shelves and the ceiling and the rack. Everything is so clear.
I sense the five-year old staring at me.
I look at the little boy with my Ben Franklin glasses dangling on my nose.
He smiles pointing to his temple with his index finger as if to say, “it took you this long to figure out you need reading glasses, dumb ass.”
No he didn’t do that, but ….
I turn to the chart. I want more tiny words to look at. I am suddenly a visual crack addict needing to read.
Letters so perfectly formed. Such acuity. Such defined lineage and punctilious paragraph alignment.
I feel like I have brought my pupils to Manny Moe and Jack -The Pep Boys – and had my eyes balanced.
I chuckle out loud.
I stare around the store. Everything far away is out of focus. Apparently this is an up close and personal visual experience. It’s all about the reading.
“Next,” comes the voice from behind the counter.
I watch as a high risk unit from the CDC wearing protective yellow suits and respirators wheels the Mexican Black Market Viagra man out of the RX.
I pull the glasses off my face and the world goes back to its obfuscated visual self.
“Next.”
I walk to the line and squint at the person behind the counter. Man? Woman? Hmmmm? I squint, then pull my eyes apart hoping more vision, more light, will enter my irises. I try to determine the gender of that shoulder length blonde mop surrounding a creamy colored oval on top of a lump of skin adorned by a white lab coat. I stare at the name plate on the lab coat.
Beatrice? Bob? Bambi? “Bellicose?
“How much are those 1.25X’s I laugh.
“$19.99,” the female voice from Beatrice, Bambi, or Bellicose replies.
“It says it right there. Couldn’t you see that?,” she giggles.
Wise ass, I think to myself.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’m here for the monkey virus antidote.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I quip getting the last laugh of a man high who has seen the promised land and can SEE his future.
1.25X Such a bargain for only $19.99
Life’s Crazy™