Broken Glasses: A Com3dy of 3rr3s

When I woke up, I reached for my ‘black-flamingo’ glasses and ended up holding two separate halves of one plastic frame.* I knew it would be a bad day. In fact, if I were to label my day, I would borrow “Comedy of Errors” from Shakespeare; so, maybe that’s plagiarism. I’ll change it to “Comedy of Error,” because it seems that’s all we need, changing it a letter. Maybe, to fit in with the posts on Facebook and Instagram, I should make it “Com3dy of 3rr3s.” How does Shakespeare relate to my glasses, you ask?

Well, I broke my glasses last night at some point; when I passed out at eight, I guess I left my glasses in my bed, rolled over on them, and snapped them in two. And thus, it began: a day of dysfunction. Now, most of my days are very dysfunctional because let’s face it, I’m not the most put-together person out there, but this one was probably in my top three worst days. Doesn’t win over the dog-poop-on-shoes day. One of my friends told me I shouldn’t say on top because it’s crude, but I don’t really see how, so…

Back to my glasses. Have you ever seen something so bizarre, so out of place, you just stare and stare at it for a few seconds and kind of think uhhh what just happened to me? Because I had that moment. I sat there in my bed, the two halves (bear in mind, the frame was snapped in two right at the bridge of the nose) dangling from my fingers, and I kind of mumbled to myself, “What are these?” then, well, I realized: these are my glasses. And they are broken. Then, I yelled, “Stoney! Stoney!” because we all know dads are the fixers of the broken objects…and Mom came in.

So, well, I held up the glasses, and I kinda gave her this hopeless giggle, like oh dur, Mom, look what I did and from what I could see (unfortunately, I’m blinder than a deer in fog lights when I don’t have my glasses, so there’s not much on the nuances of my mom’s facial expressions here), she also had that moment, the um what? Then, she exclaimed, “Oh my God, are you kidding me? Go call the eye doctor, this is your problem!”

Hadn’t even had my coffee yet, man. And I had to call someone? On the phone? Well, long story short, I called my local optometrist, got nothing…that’s when Mom stopped shouting and took over. Lucky for me, we found an appointment open at their Winchester office. We set one for 3:40 pm. Then, I put on the spare glasses Mom unearthed from Lord knows where and said to myself, “I think I’m gonna go back to bed and maybe start over tomorrow.” Life is not a video game, however, so I had to attend virtual school and pretend I could see. No saving for later for me.

My brother just came in, looked over my shoulder, and said, “Oh, so you’re writing an oh pity me blog?”

He’s folding my laundry right now, by the way.

Look, I’m not asking for your sympathy, I’m begging! And this isn’t an oh pity me blog, but man, pity would be nice. Like, maybe some flowers too? I like irises and spider lilies. Just so you know, FYI.

—Madeline E. Phoenix.

*We later learned from the optician that “black flamingo” is the given name for the color of my frames. This doesn’t make any sense because I would like them to be like my flamingo pajamas: black, with cute little flamingos dancing up and down the sleeves and body of the pajamas. Apparently, this is not so.