WE LOOK BEFORE AND AFTER, AND PINE FOR WHAT IS NOT

Just behind me, hanging from the 103-year-old mantel of our 103-year-old home, is a passel of eyeglasses.

These eyeglasses are gathered there for the temporary distraction or pleasure or horror of anyone who cares to try them on or watch somebody try them on.

Come into our dining room/writing room/art room and take a look at the world through these eyeglasses…or let the world marvel at the new and altered you in the act of wearing these eyeglasses.  Let’s see…what glasses can I spot at this moment?

There are the Backwards Shades, a double-whammy of a young person’s dream—when you don these, nobody can see your eyes, so they don’t know what you’re looking at. But, more interesting than that is the bonus fact that the inside edges of the dark lenses are mirrored. That means you can see whatever is behind you, too! There are things you will enjoy spying when nobody knows you can see them, such as a quick smooch. There are things you are sorry you saw, such as somebody snickering or rolling their eyes at you.  It’s almost as good as that adolescent fantasy of turning invisible and being able to see people who can’t see you, or entering forbidden places undetected. These are cool glasses! And no batteries needed!

How nice to not only watch where you are going, but where you have been, all at the same moment.

Then, there are pairs of 3-D eyeglasses, both the polarized gray ones and the red-and-green ones. In my adulthood, I’ve spent much time viewing the Mars Rovers’ 3-D images direct from Mars…and in my early youth, I gazed in wonder at Wonder Woman’s bosom and Superman’s fists in 3-D comic books.

How nice to see a flat world suddenly have depth and perspective!

I wish somebody would invent 2-D glasses so that I could view people who get in my face as non-threatening and paper-thin.

Of course, I never know when to stop. I also own X-Ray Vision glasses (better wear your lead underwear when you visit!), nerd glasses, psychedelic glasses, rose-colored glasses, telescopic glasses, and even the dilated-pupil-protector glasses you get at the eye doctor’s.

Why is all this stuff around?

Maybe because reality is repetitive and sometimes needs a pick-me-up view.

Maybe because the limited world presented to me out of habit has many angles and details that can only be viewed by changing the spectrum a bit.

Maybe because it’s fun to see somebody giggle when they wear these things or see somebody else wear them.

Maybe just because I’m the one who needs to giggle once in a while, just to get outside my pink, wrinkled body bag and take an oblique look at an all-too-real world

© Jim Reed 2009 A.D.