Common Threads

I was summoned to the principal’s office exactly one time.  It was in the fifth grade.  There was a phone in the back of our classroom that connected only to the main office.  If a student was being checked out of school or a needed to see the nurse, the phone would buzz and word was passed.  Whenever that phone buzzed the teacher or aid would have all eyes on her, as we wondered if one among us might be lucky enough to escape class for even a few minutes.

I remember it well because the teacher’s aid furrowed her brow, eyes roaming around the room, finally settling on the teacher as she began shaking her head.  This was an entirely new response and now she really had the room’s attention.

“Patrick, Jeff, Bobby and Chris are wanted in the principal’s office – for disciplinary reasons?!?!

I, too, was shocked.

While I truly didn’t know what I’d done, I was quite certain this wouldn’t play well at home.  As we were shepherded into the principal’s office, I vividly recall feeling the nervousness and trepidation.

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Well, those two feelings were back over the weekend.  Instead of a teacher’s aid guiding me into a principal’s office, it was Father Time ushering me up to the Foster Grant display at Walgreen’s.  Much as I tried, the voices in my head were not to be quieted:

“I’m only 47, do I really need to do this?”

“If I’m really doing this, what’s next in the aging process parade of horrors?”

“Which ones are the men’s glasses?”

“Why the hell is the display next to the adult diapers?”

As it turns out, excepting a couple little hiccups, these babies were one great buy.  I often read leases and other mind numbing legal documents and now everything looks like a Dick and Jane book through my 1.75’s.  I feel like the world has opened up for me:  the grass is greener, the air is fresher.  As a reading glasses novice I’m definitely still getting a handle on use.  Reading is obviously fine, but if one’s attention should be drawn suddenly across the room there’s a very real risk of something akin to seasickness.  As a result, I’ve been working on what I call the “Aunt Polly” method, setting the glasses further down my proboscis and shifting my gaze above the top rim of the glasses when I need to change focus.  Bingo.  I also spoke to the manager at Walgreen’s to suggest they bundle reading glasses with Dramamine for the new user.  She said they’d give it some thought but I got the feeling she was just being polite.

It also would have been wise to tell my kids about the new purchase before they had to see for themselves.  I was working last night at the dining room table when my daughter walked by, stopped, stifled a grin and asks, “Oh, so we’re doing this now?”  It was as if I was lounging around in a sundress, leafing through Crossdresser’s Quarterly.

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In case anyone is wondering, the trip to the principal’s office was due to a little dust up while walking home from school the previous day.   The four of us got into a war of words with a few boys from that other fifth grade class at our school.  Things apparently hit a crescendo as we passed the home of an old lady who happened to know one of the boys.  She called the school, he got called into the office and sang like a canary.  There had been no punches thrown, no profanities, simply some yelling and maybe a flying pine cone or two.  That’s just how life was on the mean streets of Palos Verdes Estates back in the early ‘80s.

We all wrote a note of apology and that was that.  No spring chicken, I’m still surprised this woman was able to recognize one of us.  Must have been looking over her rims.