Its annoying when i lose my spectacles. I exit the shower with a spring in my step- one of those long showers where you get lost in a protracted fancy, imagining yourself under a waterfall or swimming in a river, or prancing around with a swedish supermodel in the rain- exuberant at how light i feel in my new found aura of filthlessness. But my optimism is premature. Once i reach my room, i realize that everything is an incoherent blur; much like when one wakes up in the middle of the night with crap in one's eyes, and stumbles listlessly towards the very distant dorm toilet. Turns out that myopia stops being funny after a while, especially in moments like these. And the cold breeze taunting my soggy self doesn't help my sense of humor.
All proceedings are stalled until my specs i find. There's a very subtle irony in this situation, as if god were bored and in the mood for a practical joke or two. What i'm looking for is what i need to look for what i'm looking for. I can barely tell my thumb from my dong (i know what you're thinking, but i have a large thumb) -to be asked to find my ultra invisible pair of spectacles is this state is almost a mockery of whatever sight i have left. Its like asking a one legged man to run a marathon. And invisible they are indeed, thanks to my insistence on buying a pair which , i paraphrase- "don't stand out too much". I should have listened to mom. She likes me with the thick frames. Another pang shoots through me, the familiar pain that you feel when you realize that you should have listened to mom. Some common references- "Oh shit, the doctor says its lung cancer", or " This hangover is the worst hangover in the history of hangovers!" or even " Is it just me, or is this bungee chord too long? "- you get the idea.
The irony is not lost on me, its very much like cutting diamond, where the cleaver has a diamond tip. And you need a cleaver to make the cleaver with the diamond tip. I wonder how they made the first cleaver. Maybe some lucky caveman found a sharp piece of diamond to begin with, and set the chain in motion. Too bad he didn't patent it, he wouldn't have to live in a cave otherwise. Nevertheless, realizing my current predicament to be no ordinary one, i set about wistfully trying to recover the lost relic, groping around familiar spots where i usually set my specs down. I grab many an unexpected object during my thorough search of the room- a decadent chocolate bar behind the suitcase under the bed (that explains the smell); the calculator that i'd lost an year ago, turns out it was under the book rack ; the skeleton of an abandoned lizard tail , which i don't chuck away in disgust, but feel the small bone joints of the structure with my finger tips before carefully storing it away in my desk drawer. I realize how creepy that sounds now that i'm writing it down, but it seemed perfectly normal at the time, trust me.
But fate is in a particularly cruel mood today, and I find quite a few long forgotten treasures, but nothing that could help me see . I begin to realize how wonderful an invention the specs are, restoring your vision as soon as you put them on , and they don't even need batteries to work . There's only the slight drawback - they can get lost. Its as if they sprouted legs and walked away. I've never lost something as dismally as I seem to have lost my specs. If there were a category in the oscars for the "Most hopelessly lost thing", i think my glasses would definitely make the cut. Even if they don't win, they'll definitely give stiff competition to " Lindsay Lohan's virginity" and " Taxpayers money in the commonwealth games" . And one could expect the speech to probably go as "I wouldn't have been able to do this without my wearer, who threw himself off the balcony the day i got lost. This (raising the golden statue above his head) is for his sacrifice. Amen". I'll be the Heath Ledger to my spectacles Oscar . How sad is that?
I've missed my morning class already, and I don't think i'll ever find my glasses. The sun will cool to a white dwarf before I set my eyes on those wretched backstabbing life destroyers , fucking spectacles. Fuck them. I do not need a crutch of silicon dioxide to get on with my life. Myopic as an old horse that i might be, I still have my near vision intact. I pick up the newspaper, settle my wet ass down on the chair, and navigate to a random page. There's a report which claims that many of the books restricted by copyright till now, are being made available to the blind in braille, free of charge. It makes me feel better. In your face, spectacles.
