I’ve worn glasses since I was in fifth grade. I hated them at first, because they made me stand out and, trust me, no one in elementary school wants to be called “four eyes.” In time, though, I got used to them, they’re just a fact of life.
I’ve had big ones, small ones, rectangular ones, Harry Potteresque circular ones, and even progressive lenses (i.e., a nice word for bi-focals). For a while in high school and college and a few years after, I wore contact lenses, until it became too problematic finding the right fit.
My glasses correct my vision to 20/20. However, my wife likes to say that when it comes to finding the mayonnaise jar in the refrigerator or my favorite polo shirt in the laundry pile or the pack of light bulbs in the garage, I’m as blind as a bat.
If you were to talk to her, she’d probably point out that the “figure of speech” is actually quite wrong, because the bat still manages to fly around at night and kill mosquitoes and grasshoppers, where I’m just a big doof of a husband.
I get her frustration—I’ve experienced our youngest son looking for his chapstick or some piece of clothing enough to see the frustration myself—but I’m convinced she has a super secret, super power or simply hides things from my son and I.
In fact, I’m convinced that mothers everywhere have special contact lenses that only they wear that reveals everything to them, sort of a personal Marauder’s Map like the one J.K Rowling dreamt up and first introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Here’s my proof.
Our son looks in his room for his sneakers. Of course, he can’t find them and yells down to the kitchen where my wife and I are sitting, enjoying a Saturday morning cup of coffee, for help. We look at each other and let out a smug parental laugh at his clumsy ways. My wife yells back up for him to look with his eyes. I make some joke about him finding the shoes the minute one of us stops what we’re doing and enters his room.
A few minutes later, he comes down, looking pathetic and says that he’s looked every where. I take pity on the poor boy and follow him up to his room offering to help. I look under his bed, nothing. I look behind the door, nothing. I look in a few other “normal spots” and still nothing. Now, I’m frustrated and he looks at me with a big “I told ya so” grin.
Finally, my wife comes in and kicks up a pillow lying on the floor, the same pillow that my son and I had both looked under a few minutes before, and the sneakers magically appear out of nowhere. She looks at the two of us, lets out a deep sigh, and before walking out of the room, says a two-year-old would have better focus than the two of us.
I yell back to her, “It’s magic, I tell you.”
She’s having none of it, but I’m convinced that most women, especially most mothers, have a “built-in, find-it sensor” that most men seem to lack. My wife and daughter both have it, my two sons and I, well, of course, we’re missing it.
I could keep writing, but I have to go. We’re going out grocery shopping soon, I can’t find the shirt I was planning to wear, and I’m too scared to ask my wife if she’s seen it.
Writing from the Heart with Brian 