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Broken | Dec 29 2002

I’m on the bus, heading to the For Eyes place downtown to get my glasses fixed. The left stem broke this morning as I tried to bend it back into position. It was an interesting moment when it broke. I thought, It’s broken now. It made me remember a time I was in a car with friends and the car began to swerve off the road (it was snowing) and it seemed like it was taking a long time for the car to swerve the entire way off the road (which it wasn’t), so I turned to the person sitting next to me and said, Remember this moment. I didn’t get upset that it had broke; I just started to figure out what I needed to do to fix it. (I’m extremely nearsighted—legally blind in the left eye and hardly much better in the right. As a kid I once, having broken my glasses at school, walked into the pole of a traffic sign.)

After some thought, I tried to epoxy the little piece that broke, although I doubted it would hold because the break was at the worst stress point. I took a shower while it set, and when I returned it was clear that the epoxy wasn’t going to hold. Still I managed to put the glasses on without breaking the seal (it did bend, though). I wore the glasses for about a half-hour like that before the seal gave. Now the stem is in my pants pocket and my glasses are in my jacket pocket and I’m writing this from what appears to be the bottom of a swimming pool.

*

Given how badly I see, there are only four times I go without glasses. In order of frequency:

  1. Sleep
  2. Shower
  3. Sex
  4. Swim

What can I say, I take a lot of showers.

Sorry, five:

  1. Broken