I mentioned briefly that I lost a pair of glasses in Mexico, but there’s actually some follow-up to the Lost Glasses story that I mentioned in another post as well. So, first: my glasses are expensive. I have progressive lenses because I am both nearsighted and farsighted, and they’re transition lenses because I’m sensitive to the sun, and I wear them almost all the time, these days, because my aged eyes have become so dry that the minute I put in contacts they feel like I’ve been wearing them for ten hours already. It’s annoying.
And as you may recall, I had barely arrived in Mexico before a massive ocean wave surprised me and carried my glasses right off my face and into the abyss, leaving me so blind that J was holding my hand as we crossed over the beach rocks to get back to our apartment. And then one of the arms broke off of my back-up pair of glasses so that I was walking around Mexico with glasses just teetering on my nose precariously until Cute W met up with us with yet another back-up pair and some contact lenses. That may seem like plenty of glasses adventures, but it was only about a month later that I had a new glasses challenge.
I’d arrived home from Mexico and immediately ordered up another pair of my favorite glasses that had been Lost At Sea. Had to wait a while for them to finally arrive. Then, shortly after I first perched the brand-new glasses on my face, I managed to lose them again. It was on our trip with S to Niagara Falls, when we saw Vance Joy & Jonah Kagan at ArtPark, showed S the falls, and stopped at Six Flags Darien Lake on the way home.
We were almost ready to leave the amusement park and pretty exhausted from our eventful weekend when we took a last fateful ride on one of the roller coasters, the Motocoaster. I had been wearing my glasses on multiple rollercoasters all day without incident. On this particular ride, you can click the link to see that it looks like you are riding on a motorcycle, but basically your torso is firmly locked into place for your security. Cute W was in another row, but S and I sat right next to each other. Before the coaster even officially started, it made one sudden, jerky movement that flung my glasses off my face. I gasped and looked down to the platform directly below my feet. The glasses had landed literally within a foot of my foot, but I was so locked into the mechanism that I couldn’t get to them. S and I looked at each other, trying to figure out what we could do to retrieve them, for possibly half a second before the coaster started going. I couldn’t reach the glasses with my foot and I couldn’t even see them anymore as we were pitched around curves at breakneck speed. Well, that coaster ride was spoiled. I had zero fun during the actual ride, and dismounted stressed, mildly nauseated, and half-blind.
The glasses were surprisingly easy to find. They’d been hurled onto the pavement several yards from the ride, but they’d landed in the area that was blocked off for security. What was so infuriating was that they were once again so close to being within reach: if we’d had a rope and a hook, we may have been able to lean over the rails of the pedestrian bridge to retrieve them. Many people helpfully pointed out the glasses, but we weren’t allowed to go to the glasses ourselves, and the ride operators weren’t allowed to leave their posts for the 45 seconds it would have taken someone to grab them for us. We were officially instructed to go to the customer service office across the park to fill out a report where we could potentially get our hands on the glasses when the park closed for the evening (which I believe at the time was something like five hours away) and confidentially advised that a kind security guard might be willing to get them for us if we could locate one. I found a guard who sent me along to the customer service office.
At this point, Cute W had snapped. The glasses were so ridiculously close, and we were tired and ready to go home. He decided that he was just going to jump the fence and take the glasses. “What are they going to do, throw us out? We want to leave, anyway.” As we pondered what to do, he thought again. “Here, take my wallet and keys, just in case they arrest me.” Oh, lordy. We didn’t really think he’d be arrested, but his plan was to sprint to the closest gate so that we wouldn’t be delayed. Meanwhile, S and I headed for the parking lot with the plan that we’d all reconvene at the car.
What followed was an extended period in which Cute W was staking out the Motocoaster ride, trying to get a sense of the teen workers’ routines so that he could find the best opportunity to dart in and nab the glasses, while S and I headed through the park and the main entrance toward the car. Except then, an extra security person or two arrived at the ride to thwart Cute W’s efforts while S and I realized that locating the car was not as easy you’d think when my natural state of disorientation and lack of a sense of direction was exacerbated by extremely poor sight, and S displayed below-average observation skills by asking me, “What color is our car again?” More time passed. It turned out that a Motocoaster rider had gotten injured, EMS and the head of security had arrived, and if Cute W had ever had the opportunity to get to my glasses, it had melted away. Meanwhile, S and I were circling the parking lot seeing a lot of cars that were not ours. When I texted Cute W to let him know that we were still wandering, he was convinced that the car had been stolen. Cute W, with his gifted sense of direction and logical problem solving that would have resulted in a quick and efficient grid search, couldn’t imagine that the two of us could possibly fail to find a car in a parking lot. Meanwhile, I assured him that the combination of weariness, heat, motion sickness, and half-blindness had rendered me basically useless, and his conviction that the car must have left the parking lot was based on misplaced confidence in my basic competence.
Eventually he called me from the car. Over the phone, he attempted to direct me, then decided it would just be easier to drive over and pick me up. The amusement park retrieved the (somewhat scratched) glasses and, for a small fee, mailed them to our house. Since these events, I have purchased and lost two (2) eyeglass chains.
You know, I have other strengths.
