rogueboy

Friday was relatively uneventful until I came back from lunch.

I adjusted my glasses and they felt a bit loose. They'd been feeling loose the last few days, flimsy. I take them off and they come apart in my hands. The frame split right where the bridge above the nose met the left frame, and where the link to the nose pad met the left frame. Because of the angle of the connecting parts, these parts could not be taped back together. I was desperately trying to tape together the parts when Enginito came into the break room. I suggested using super glue, and he offered a rare piece of good advice by saying that super glue could eat away and disintegrate my plastic lenses.

So in other words I was f*cked. I've been legally blind since I was 8 years old and my vision has deteriorated steadily since. Even with the glasses on I had trouble seeing street signs from 20 feet off. I had had the same glasses for four years and had needed new ones for the last year, but either did not have the money to get them or didn't have the time.

I'd have to make the time today, because otherwise I was incapacitated. I couldn't drive because I couldn't see. I could barely work, having to get as close as two inches from the computer screen and my paperwork to work (which isn't healthy but that's another story). I should have told Dave but he was at a gift exchange at the other building so he would have to wait. My only route was to call my mother and get to an eyeglass place to get a new pair, which meant cutting out of work early, but I couldn't leave until she had picked up all the kids from school.

I called my mother anyway and she was amused. Not that my glasses were broken but that I finally called her after about three weeks. Coincidentally I had made plans to pay my parents a visit tonight before going to Border's... or do I mean ironically? She said she would call me back and arrange to pick me up, but first she had to go to some thing they were doing at her place of employment.

I stumbled around to get to Dave's office and could see remarkably well given the circumstances. I could make out shapes well enough to see where I was going, but I could not make out particular people as I passed them, until I was about two or three feet from them. I hope the people I passed who said hello that led me to reply with a confused greeting didn't feel at all slighted.

I found Dave and told him what had happened. He gave me the OK to take off early, and I told him it'd be at least a couple of hours before my mother could pick me up and, oh by the way, if my mother does call this line could you let me know, thanks. I went back to my office and got back to work, because I still had to research some serial numbers for 270 used machines we were going to use to fill an order in South America. I ran an inquiry and had to run to the data entry supervisor to find out why 24 machines were out of stock.

Her name is Sara and she's very pretty and is sporting a solid D cup (which may or may not be real), and thus is hated by all her female employees and is wanted by all the male employees. Quoting Dave, "I want her to sit on my face!" I don't think she likes me, for no adequately explored reason. I love it when pretty girls hate me for absolutely no reason: I don't say or do anything mean, make absolutely no lewd comments, I treat all people with respect, and yet pretty girls spontaneously decide they don't like me. What-motherfucking-ever. In any case, she's pleasantly surprised to see me, and I'm rather surprised. As I point out the 24 machines, she asks what happened to my glasses, and I tell her, and she could care less, but anyway there are also these game removals on her desk and you need to do them for me, please, she says. Apparently the 24 games out of stock are out of stock because these removals haven't been processed. So now I have to process the removals to get these 24 missing games.

But instead of giving me necessary paperwork to process the removals I have a single sheet of paper to cover 12 machines, and absolutely nothing to account for the other 12 machines. So now I'm researching year old sales orders to process a removal that should have been done three months ago just so I can process 12 mystery machines on a 270 machine order, ALL WHILE I'M BLIND AS A BAT BECAUSE MY GLASSES ARE BROKEN, while waiting for my mother to call so I can give her directions to my workplace so she can take me to a quickie eyeglass place to make me new glasses so I can function normally.

What. The. Fuck.

Actually, the whole situation was more amusing to me than painful. I FINALLY got a phone call around 2:40 pm and my mother says that she tried about 50 times to call me at Dave's number but Dave kept telling her, "Sorry, you've got the wrong number." All I can say to that is HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Anyway, I give her directions to my work and she has to stop me halfway because the directions are so convoluted and confusing, and that she'll call me back when she gets about a mile or so away. Click.

So I keep working, and keep waiting, and 3 o'clock comes and goes, no call. 3:30 comes and goes, no call. FINALLY the phone rings.

My mother says, "I've tried the ***-**** number 50 times, and the man that picked up kept telling me that I had the wrong number."

I had no answer to Dave not knowing my mother was going to call despite my telling him so. But I told her how to get to the warehouse and she hung up once she was in front of the warehouse. She was waiting. I grabbed my stuff and went looking for Dave, who asked me to at least say goodbye before leaving. I went down the catwalk, made my way down the stairs, walked to the other offices, made my way up the stairs, and walked the catwalk to Dave's office.

Dave wasn't there, and nobody knew where he had gone. Someone suggested he might have taken a smoke. I figured maybe he went to see Sara about the removals, and so I walked downstairs, took a look in Polish Steve and Enginito's new office, no dice, walked past Floorgirl and the folks on the floor, over to the shipping/receiving area, through the gate, luckily didn't get hit by any forklifts despite being blind, walked down the aisles of parts to Sara's office. No Dave. It had been 5 minutes and my mother was waiting outside, and possibly being accosted by warehouse employees. I walked back through shipping/receiving, avoiding flying forklifts, walked back to the main office, up the stairs, and down the catwalk. No Dave. I go back downstairs and there he is sitting in the new office talking with Floorgirl. I go inside and let him know I'm taking off.

My mother was about to take off when I ran out to the car. So I get there and I cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about... oh yes, Dad and her are taking off for a run with Dad's Asian biker gang in California and the weather's pretty bad, so she's not sure....

Wait a minute, what was that you said?... yes, my dad is a member of an Asian Biker Gang. He owns a giant blue Harley and he bikes to work in full-out Harley gear. His gang is called the Panoi Riders Club or something similar and they bike across California and commandeer parks so they have picnics and crash weddings and things like that. They usually top off the run by going for ice cream. My mother rides with her in the backseat; the Harley's so big there's a full backseat. My mother then tells me she's going to pull money out of her 401K, pay off the bills, then get herself a Harley of her own. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. But in any case, my mother may try to talk my dad out of the trip because it's raining in Cali and will rain all weekend and the rain may rust his bike. That's what we talked about while I watched red nebulae taillights out the windshield amidst a sea of blurs through my cataracts-for-eyes.

After battling MASSIVE traffic due to X-Mas Shoppers, we got to the Galleria Mall a little after sundown despite having left at 4 pm. Lenscrafters, says my mother, is the ONLY place that'll hook me up with an exam and a pair of glasses ASAP, but it won't take Teamsters Insurance, so I'll end up paying through the nose. If I had visited a Teamsters covered doctor and waited a week for my glasses, I would have only needed to pay a $150 co-pay, but I'm looking at full price for the eye exam, about $70, then $100 for my you're-fucking-blind lenses, then at least $100 for the frames. Looks like no one I know's getting anything for X-Mas.

Before you get all huffy, let me say that, if I indeed had gone X-Mas shopping for people this year, I not only may not have had the money for the glasses, but it's quite possible I wouldn't be able to pay my rent and bills this month, so shut your trap and let someone be practical with his/her money during the holiday season for a change.

Okay, no one except for Turner. He's still getting an X-Mas present or two; it'll just be a bit late.

I sign at the desk for an eye exam and my mother has to help me fill out the paperwork because I can barely see it. Isn't that... um... PATHETIC? It takes us about 5 minutes to fill out the paperwork, and I am almost instantly get whisked back to a room full of weird instruments. The nurse asks me if I want a Dilation X-Ray and I say no because it's 30 bucks extra to do it, even though I haven't had one in 4 years and am probably overdue. I stare into instruments with bright lights for about five minutes, I get the blow-air-into-your-eye glaucoma test and I battle to keep my eyes open for it, because I don't want to be one of those pussies that spends 10 minutes trying to get a good eye test because I have eyes that are bigger pussies than Turner ordering a drink at a coffeehouse counter. The test is quickly done and I then get whisked into ANOTHER room with giant eyesight instruments.

A mad scientist looking like a thin robotic Jeremy Irons whisks into the room about 4.3 seconds later and asks me the typical questions, shows no amusement when I say I'm about a year overdue for an eye exam. I have a very difficult time trying to comply with him shining his light directly into my eyes to examine them because I have the most sensitive eyes on earth. In fact, I cannot wear contacts, and if I could, none of this would be a big deal, and I probably wouldn't be wearing glasses in the first place. I get to look at the 'can you see better with this lens or with that lens' machine, whose name I obviously cannot recall, and indeed I'm pretty fucking blind. The doctor then suggests that, since it's been 4 years, that I simply bite the bullet and have the Dilation X-Ray. The subtext, "Because you're long overdue and your blindness is appalling, either you do the Dilation X-Ray, or I'm not signing your eyeglass prescription."

So I get whisked back into the 1st room and I did it, 30 bucks down the toilet but I might as well get this out of the way just in case I have some fucked condition that'll lead to eventual blindness (aside from masturbation, BA-DUM). No eyedrops of nothing: they just had me look, one eye at a time, into a machine that then shines a green light and takes a deep X-ray picture of my entire eye, front to back, using some straw-thin X-ray technology. I get whisked back into room 2 and the mad scientist whisks into the room, and brings up the X-Rays on his computer. My eyes, thankfully, are perfectly normal, aside from the fact that I'M FUCKING BLIND, and that the optic nerve is stretched from having worn glasses all these years (that, apparently, is also normal. I wonder if the mad scientist thinks cancer and AIDS are normal as well). After that, my eye doctor visit is complete, and I can now go buy glasses. My vision is a perfect 20/675.

A raspy-voiced sophisticate greets us and shows us her titanium frame collection because my mother's big mouth says she'd prefer titanium lenses, forgetting for the moment that even though I'm blind that I can still speak for myself. I see prices like $159 and $179 and then hear that preparing my specialized plastic lenses will cost $170 alone, and I nearly go catatonic. I only have about $500 in the bank because I haven't deposited my check yet, and even with that, that's $500! For GLASSES.

Seeing I'm about to go into shock, she quickly whisks us to her cheaper frames. They've got some thin square rimmed frames, the stylin' ones, for only about $99. My mother laments that they're so small, and I politely ask her to shut the fuck up (not in those words, 'tis the season) while I try on some dark thin square frames. These are similar to what a lot of people (up to an including Elaine) are wearing these days, so it's nice to know I'll have these long after they've gone out of style. Years ago, when I got my last frames, they caught my eye because they were pretty similar to what a girl named Alina Shell was wearing. I had met her not too long ago and she was working at the Barnes and Noble in Henderson, and I REALLY liked the glasses she was wearing, hence I got the most similar frames I could find when the time came. Was the same thought process in mind this time around with Elaine in place of Alina?... perhaps. From what I can see staring two inches from the mirror, I like what I see and decide these will be the frames.

We pay, and the woman feels bad because I cannot get credit and this would bankrupt, so after ringing up $370 total, she knocks off 25% off the frames and I'm left paying only $340. I pay with the debit card and we leave, because we have to wait an hour for them to put it all together.

We head over to Hot Topic to fulfill my younger brother's wish list. Now, my mother goes into a story about Joe that happened about two weeks ago:

Joe apparently was using a PE locker that wasn't his, so when they got a new kid and assigned him a locker, it was taken. The PE coaches got some wire clippers and cut the padlock open. I get the feeling this is some Barbara-Chilson-like excuse (ask me about that Nazi bitch Barbara Chilson later) to make a random check of some kid's locker, but we're drifting off topic. They get the locker open and find a book bag, but they cannot tell who it belongs to. If he had a big fat dork-on name tag that said Joseph Gomez on the bag, they would have likely left all alone, but then again this is probably a Chilson-Raid, so simply discovering the identity of this locker-rat is probably not the purpose of said Chilson-Raid. They opened the bag to 'check the books for a name' and found the following:

- A pack of cigarettes
- A copy of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut... MY copy.
- A few pages of 'explicit' pornography, downloaded off the Internet.

Joe, keep in mind, was still out on the field, for class, and had no idea any of this was happening.

So anyway, my mother is awoken by a phone call around 8 am. The dean has my brother in her office and he's facing some suspension time for being caught with pornography. The rest is dismissible shit, even the cigarettes, but the porn is big trouble.

So you can imagine my mother walking onto Green Valley High School, pissed as shit that A) She has to get out of bed after only 4 hours of sleep to B) Pick up Joe because C) He just got rung up for possession of porn and cigarettes. Joe's in the lobby and he's been crying for a while and he snivels to her, "Whatre you going to do to me?" And my mother says, "Just shut your fucking mouth and let me handle this."

My mother isn't the brightest bulb in the box, but she's pretty eloquent and is wise enough, in the company of the dean and a couple of administrators, to do all the talking. She decries the porn and the cigarettes and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac even though I've shared it with her and the family in the past and everyone was cool with it. But, of course, the Chilsonites made a very big deal of it.

Admin: (holding MY copy of JTHM) Do you REALIZE what's in THIS?
Mother: No, I've never read it.
Tsk, tsk, mother. I've SHOWN you the scenes where Johnny cuts up everyone in the coffeehouse.
Admin: DO YOU REALIZE-
Mother: I'm going to punish him. I'm going to take away his computer privileges and not let him-

... and so on. My mother assured them she would handle all this and because she carries herself so well the administrators were content to simply suspend him for two days and let it rest at that. They still kept MY copy of JTHM, the fucking Clark County School Gestapo bastards.

I can only imagine how humiliating THAT had to have been. Joe's not even allowed to come to my sister's house anymore (because sister Jenny's boyfriend has apparently been supplying him with the cigarettes) or use the computer. So the only other question that arises is, What the hell compels a person to do something as STUPID as bringing porn to school?! Apparently Joe had brought it with him to keep it hidden from his mother. NOW, COME ON. When I was his age, I kept that printed shit WELL-HIDDEN. I kept it under the mattress, between the bed-board liner and the board itself. I even kept it within other books, mixed in with actual paperwork. Even if she was cleaning she would have never bothered to look through it, the same way the Chilsonites deconstructed everything in his backpack.

Anyway, after listening to that, we got Joe a Weezer CD and Squee, the 2nd JTHM book. Hypocrisy's such a bitch, and if you say So is Your Mother, I will kill you. Even if she IS. Tis the season, you fuck. Then my mother dragged me into Victoria's Secret to get some mints and some lotion, marking the 2nd time I had ever been in there. The first time was when I was an auditor in early 2000 and our company had to do an audit there that night. Having grown up with four sisters and my mother, I didn't have as much trouble handling women's undergarments as the other guys. Standing in line with a couple dozen women, my mother and I loudly joked about me having a personal lingerie collection, and playing dress-up with blow-up dolls before having a blow-up-doll-orgy. I'm sure all these women were amused at this. I should come into Victoria's Secret and say horrible reprehensibly perverted things about myself that aren't true but are funny because they offend everyone around us more often.

We went back and my glasses were ready, though it took five minutes to adjust them so they fit reasonably well. It still felt weird wearing them because I was accustomed to having to strain while wearing my outdated old frames to see. I don't have to strain because the lenses are 20/15, but it's still weird trying to see with them.

My mother dropped me at the house around 7 pm, as she couldn't drive me to my work to get my truck due to time constraints. She had to go to the laundromat (the same one I go to!) and run a couple more errands before tomorrow, as she and my father were leaving early tomorrow for the California run, weather be damned. (Turns out she didn't go) My sister Lisa drove me to my work, no strings attached, and I mentioned the Joe incident to her. She didn't realize she hadn't told me about it. Nobody ever tells me anything.

What a whacked out fucking day. But at least I can see!

To my credit, the weekend has more than made up for it by being pretty mundane, which is actually a welcome relief.