On Cleaning Eyeglasses
Well, first of all I want to thank everyone for the lovely birthday wishes in my comments section yesterday. I am a tad surprised on how personally impactful turning 45 was yesterday. I think the "fives" always get me, I can still recall 10 (ten) years ago turning 35 and feeling that I had somehow embarked upon a new stage in the Princess Cruiseline cruise of my life. Now at 45 I suspect, as I lean over the railings of the SS. Bobtastic and watch the shimmering and wet dolphins racing the cruiseliner, leaping and cavorting in the seaspray air and making that crazy dolphin laughing musical sound they do so much better than the Patagonian Toothfish could even imagine trying, that somehow I've left the port again and while I don't see any Somalian pirates pursuing us with hateful and greedy abandon neither do I sense I've got a battleship full of well equipped marines at my back either. That is what 45 feels like!
Anyhow, I recently received correspondence from the Office of Metaphors and Metallurgy of the US Department of Agriculture inquiring why my MRP (Metaphor Rate per Post) has dropped so significantly recently. Apparently, with the collapsing economy in its death spiral to a sudden and crashing total failure of consumer-focused life as we know it, they are attempting to identify some of the known concomitants of a healthy economy, one of which is the ample and fluid use of metaphors in the blogosphere. In other words, when your life and world is failing around you, nobody thinks to even use metaphors or allegories or even analogies anymore, we just cannot get beyond the basic concrete realities of our lives becoming debris fields of smoking wreckage.
I didn't know how to reply to the inquiry, other than add this following bit of metaphorical bit of childhood wonder to my post today. I wore glasses as a young lad due to severe amblyopia and a bit of the near or far sightedness, I was almost blind as a bat in my right eye actually. So when I wore glasses in elementary school, I was stunningly and horribly compulsive about keeping them clean. I mean if a tiny smudge was smudged upon the lenses I would immediately drop whatever I was doing and rush off to wash them with hand soap and water under a sink faucet and dry them with a towel. If they became smudged at school I would use the little sink and paper towels in the back of the gradeschool classrooms to quickly clean them. If it happened somewhere where access to cleaning supplies was impaired I would become agitated and preoccupied with the offending smudge or smear. It was a quite horrid obsessive-compulsive-like disorder.
I was like this with dirty eyeglasses during my entire childhood career of bespectacleism. Then, as a teenager, I was relieved of the obligation of eyeglasses by my Optometrist who told me we'd done all we could to ameliorate the laggardly right eye. Whatever happens happened. I was free of being a "four eyes."
Until around 5 years ago when I left the 30s to join the 40s where I am currently midpointing. Then it was reading glasses because even with my long apelike arms I could no longer hold reading targets far enough away from my sadly poor eyes to read. Now I wear 1.25 power reading glasses and guess what? I don't hardly even much care if they become besmudged or besmeared! Not unless they develop a grimy film that makes everything kinda gray and smeary when I try to read. Then I'll clean em. The old routinized and anxiety relieving rituals are gone. I am a free man from those horrors.
So, that is the metaphor, as you age you just quit caring about shit so much and you don't really desire or endeavor to see the world clearly anymore. It's enough to see it a little bit better but the crystalline clarity of pure unveiled vision is saved for the young. They can take it. At 45 I cannot so much anymore. I need a smudge or two!
I'm sorry I'm a day late - but happy birthday!
I hope you had a fantastic day!
Posted by: Beth | January 11, 2009 at 07:47 AM
Happy belated Birthday, Bobness! I hope you had a great day. And here's to many more 45s for ya. Heh.
Posted by: blue girl | January 11, 2009 at 08:16 AM
Hamm's beer? Only people 80 years old remember Hamm's. Well, maybe not. I have a Hamm's 'tapper' keg under the stairs somewhere. And a mug in the shape of a bear somewhere.
It's fun being old enough to buy a Hamm's beer, or a Rainier, sit back and think of you under the table at the El Patio. :-) Or was that me?
Posted by: riggs | January 11, 2009 at 09:19 AM
While perusing this post with my nose pressed to the computer screen because I can't find my glasses and I don't want to miss each scintillating word, I find myself puzzled and a little bit dizzy.
Are you writing about the time you served aboard the Patagonian Toothfish while in the Laplander Special Forces? The time you single-handedly warded off a bunch of Somalian pirates with nothing more than a musical dolphin and a tin of canned ham in your ape-like arms? And then had to fend off a group of randy Marines as they approached your backside?
My 43-year-old eyeballs are faltering. The only thing I can make out clearly is that THE ADOPTED CHRISTMAS HORSE DIED! OMG!
Posted by: Cindy H. | January 11, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Yeah, I know - when I turned 25 last November it was kind of the same for me. ;) I know Glynis and Marmie turned 25 this past year too - was it the same for you ladies? :) :) :)
BTW - check your Hotmail.
xoxox
Janet
Posted by: Janet | January 11, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Smiling at Janet....... yep, the old 25 crept up on me like a sidewinder snake :)... I wonder what it must feel like to be as old as 45 like bob lol..
x
Posted by: marmitetoasty | January 11, 2009 at 04:02 PM
Amen, Cap'n Bob. Those of us edging toward 50 definitely need to leave a few smudges on the lenses. These days, my bifocals have to get mighty skunky before I bother to clean 'em. That's probably more laziness than anything, though.
Posted by: Beez | January 11, 2009 at 10:49 PM
I hope you won't hammer me with your Thor's hammer for not even knowing that yesterday was your birthday, but alas, I didn't know. Congrats on the 45 years (although we both know your are an ancient soul only hear for a short sojourn from your real home, Valhalla). I'll be 39 this year. Do you think I'll ever catch up with you?
Posted by: toadman | January 12, 2009 at 01:51 PM
Happy Birthday, Bob. In my book, you can have the entire month to celebrate, so I'm not late. I didn't take to wearing glasses until my twenties...I could have slowed down on the motorcycle, but glasses did the trick. Recently got a pair of those fab rimless numbers...obscenely expensive...so I take my ocd out in that direction and keep 'em clean. I like the coining bespectacleism - it sounds like a new political party...for folks can't see it either way of the current parties. Peace out.
Posted by: The Fool | January 12, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Toadie......... he AINT 45 *rolling me eyes*
x
Posted by: marmitetoasty | January 12, 2009 at 02:35 PM
He's aging backwards. I saw it in a movie once, so I know it's true.
Posted by: joanna | January 12, 2009 at 02:48 PM
joanna-- wasn't that a GREAT movie? we watched it together, bobness and i, so i think maybe he is under the delusion that this is his new approach. tsk, tsk. forty five isn't THAT old, anyway. he's such a whiner. :)
Posted by: glynis | January 12, 2009 at 04:50 PM
Yep, the world is much softer through smudge-colored glasses.
An old memory was dredged up today when I heard the Obamas have narrowed their pick of pups down to two, one of which is the LABRADOODLE! Maybe you should send them some literature... :-)
Posted by: mik | January 12, 2009 at 07:27 PM
HAH!!! Nice try, I'm gonna be 51 in August and your older than me!!
Anyway, Happy belated b-day. I hope you had a blessed day.
Posted by: kdee | January 12, 2009 at 08:54 PM