Three Pairs of Glasses

Day #12

Monte decided three years ago to chuck contact lenses and wear progressive glasses instead.

They are a blended bifocal type pair of glasses.

He LOVES them.

As he was pulling into our church’s men’s retreat a few weeks ago, his glasses fell apart in his hands.

Luckily, he brought his prescription sunglasses with him as well.

Unluckily, it was unseasonably cold,

dipping near 30 degrees at night 

and it poured rain most of the weekend.

And he slept in a tent.

But that has nothing to do with this story. 

When he came back from the retreat, Monte stopped by Lenscrafters with his broken glasses and they said it was too big of a job for them and to go to a eyeglass repair shop instead.

It was closed.

When he went to the repair shop the next morning, they said there was nothing they could do since he didn’t have the broken piece from the glasses.

Except that he did.

At least he did when he was at Lenscrafters.

So Monte drove back to Lenscrafters and asked if they had seen his missing piece to his glasses.

They had.

Except they couldn’t remember exactly what that piece was for or why they had it, so THEY THREW IT AWAY.

Now, Monte was looking at the expense of an ENTIRE NEW PAIR OF GLASSES rather than a repair bill.

He was not happy.

He found an old pair of glasses that were not bifocal and decided to just wear them until he could figure out what our insurance would cover, etc.

For whatever reason, our insurance would cover the cost of a new pair of glasses

 but not until the end of the month.

Monte was fine with wearing his back up glasses.

Well he was, until we were talking one night on the couch and he touched the side of his glasses to emphasize to me that he was “thinking” about something and the side of the glasses split and the lens popped right out.

I saw the whole thing.

Monte dug around in his bathroom closet and found a super old pair of glasses.

His back-up to the back-up, 

if you will.

They weren’t the right prescription but good enough until the end of the month.

The alternative was that he was going to have to wear his prescription sunglasses everywhere like he was Bono.

I could NOT sit with him at church 

or ANYWHERE INDOORS 

with him wearing sunglasses.

I couldn’t.

I’m not even sorry.

So last night, our “date night” consisted of us running errands, eating candy corn out of a sack in Monte’s trunk and stopping by Lenscrafters so he could try on glasses.

He wanted to see if he should try a new style when the time came to order new in two weeks.

Guess who helped him?

The lady who threw away Monte’s piece of glasses frame 

that would’ve saved us a lot of money had she not.

I know!

This stuff happens to us all the time.

She told Monte that she was the one who did it. She said she dug through the trash trying to find it.

She gave Monte a REALLY good deal on a pair of glasses so he could get them right away and not at the end of the month.

So that’s how we spent our evening.

The girls said he needed to try “hipster” glasses.

I thought they made him looked like Charles Nelson Riley.

Or someone from the Flintstones.

So he went more neutral. 

I really like them.

Because we were at a Lenscrafters on a Saturday evening right before closing time, their “ready in one hour” policy didn’t apply. So the new glasses would be ready the next day.

Sweet!

After church, Monte and I ran to the grocery store.

As I was getting help finding the shoe polish,

(Really, Kroger? Next to the vitamins?!)

Monte was getting trash bags.

I heard Monte yell,

“Karmen!”

I ignored it because, honestly, it could’ve meant any number of things,

“I’m bored!”

“I’m wearing a monkey mask and want to scare you!”

“I can’t find the trash bags!”

I’ve been burned before.

When I had the shoe polish, I found Monte by the trash bags looking like this:

I almost peed my pants.

In case you weren’t counting,

that’s three pairs of broken glasses in one week.

Thank goodness for boring date nights and the guilty conscience of the salesperson at Lenscrafters because I was THIS CLOSE  to living with Bono.

THISCLOSE.

Here’s his new glasses: