This morning it is hot – so hot that I can hear plants in the yard screaming for help. I picture them clutching their little plant-throats, falling over, dead. It has been hot forever. We don’t even remember cool here in East Lansing. I must save the plants!
I ordered a new sprinkler a few days ago, always trying for one that will spray where I want it and not where I don’t. It is pretty good. I poke it into the earth and start for the faucet.
As I turn from the sprinkler, I trip on the hose. “I’m NOT falling,” I tell myself. “I never trip and fall.”
The fall, I must say, is a virtuoso performance. I clutch at empty air and execute Godzilla-type lurches, heading, ominously, for the front sidewalk. I land with considerable force, face down on the concrete. My glasses seem to take the brunt of the impact.
As I lie still, a quivering, pathetic heap, I try to accept that this has really happened. I begin take inventory without moving overmuch. Most limbs seem operative. I decide that I won’t pass out. I moan a bit, hoping someone will come to rescue me, pet me, express shock at my scraped knees and face. No one comes. No cars go by. I have to suck it up.
My glasses are useless, scarred beyond repair.
I regard the mangled lenses, grateful that just four or five days before this disaster I had ordered a replacement for my right lens, which had a scratch. That day, the ordering process had taken more than an hour because the woman who helped me had difficulty ordering just one lens. Finally I left with the matter unresolved.
She called later that day and said she had succeeded, that my cost would be $200 and some dollars. Thinking it a bit steep, I gave her my credit card information. I need my glasses. No choice.
She said that the lens would be along in a week to ten days, a special order.
This morning I call the store the minute it opens. I now also need a left lens, badly. The young woman who answers the phone is unsure what to do. She consults with the manager, since the woman who worked with me is on vacation.
After a long wait, she returns to the phone. “As it turns out, there is no way to order just one lens. We finally ordered both and decided to just eat the cost of the left one.”
“You mean both lenses are coming?” I am incredulous.
“Yes,” she said.
“I pay for the left one?”
“No. No charge for that, it’s coming anyway.”
My scraped knees feel better already. Maybe my face will follow.
