Have You Checked Your Face?

I recently started wearing glasses for reading and writing. I won’t, however, be posting funny anecdotes on Facebook about how I’ve lost them. Anecdotes like the one I posted after having walked around the house searching in vain for my mobile phone so that when I eventually called its number from the house phone, I heard its sneering ring-tone singing ‘Who’s a silly boy, then? Who’s a silly boy...’ from my left hand (being right-handed, my left hand has to resort to such infantile prankstering in order to get itself noticed; I’m sure you all know exactly what I’m talking about). My left hand has pulled this devious stunt twice now, and Son 5 has recently taken to quipping, whenever I’m mid-search for something, ‘Have you checked your hands?’  I only have myself (and my attention-seeking left hand) to blame.

Many people who take to wearing glasses in middle-age spend a few irksome years mislaying/searching for, mislaying/searching for, etc., their glasses until they finally admit defeat and attach said glasses to a piece of string to be worn around the neck so that the glasses stop absconding and are available at all times when a teenager is not on hand to read the jar’s label. Of course, the real reason why the recently long-sighted take so long to wear glasses on a string is that they secretly feel that they’re not hanging glasses around their neck so much as a sign which reads ‘Great. Now I look like a grandmother.’ Which is a bit of a mortality moment.

Middle-age may not have yet brought me wisdom but it has at least imparted a modicum of self-awareness, and I decided to wear the ‘I look like a grandmother’ sign around my neck pretty much from Day One of Glasses.

And there we have it. I have yet to lose my glasses (one small step for a Fergus; one giant leap for Ferguskind).

Postscript: Even I won’t wear two pairs of glasses round my neck, so obviously I’ve already mislaid/searched for, my spare glasses.

Post-Postscript: While writing this pointless piece of frippery I suddenly slammed my palms on my chest – where were the glasses which now permanently reside there? You can almost hear Son 5’s voice, can’t you? ‘Have you checked your face?’