So I'm standing in the dining room surrounded by Christmas tree parts, strings of lights, and ornament boxes when I reach up to wipe the sweat off my forehead and notice that I'm not wearing my glasses. Without my glasses I can do many things: trip and fall, for instance, or squint at the vague blurs surrounding me. I cannot, however, do most of the things that make my life meaningful: read, write, drive, or have a headache-free day.
Without my glasses, I don't see well enough to find my glasses, so I generally leave them in one of two specific places. They weren't there. I retraced my steps and checked in all the non-traditional places, but if they were there, I couldn't see them. I enlisted the eagle-eyed young man to help, but he couldn't find them either. We went so far as to root through the seven plastic bins I'd already packed full of Christmas stuff, but they weren't in any of 'em.
Panic ensued. Panic never helps. I retraced my steps and found myself standing in the very crowded hall closet, where earlier I had been shifting around boxes to find the right ones, and suddenly I was overcome by a faint sensory memory: while shoving a pile of boxes into the corner, a large doll fell on me and as I grabbed for it, I heard a faint rattle from the corner, as if some small, inconsequential item had fallen down behind the boxes. I didn't look to see what it was because, frankly, nothing in that closet is worth the effort required to pull those boxes out again.
Except my glasses. Further exploration revealed that they were, indeed, behind the stack of boxes, and the long-armed young man managed to scoop them up for me so I didn't even have to move those boxes again. I was without my glasses for only about two hours, but it felt like weeks.
Here's what I don't understand: the glasses must have fallen right off my face when the doll fell on me. Why didn't I notice?
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