The eyes have it

There's this little game that Kim and I play every once in a while.

It's called, "Where are my glasses?"

Curiously, this game almost always seems to be played when Kim needs her glasses — they are reading glasses, actually — the most. Like right now. This minute.

So begins a search through the house. Because we have most of the rooms closed off (as part of our energy-saving plan to keep the furnace from cutting on every two minutes) except for the ones we use the most, the search is usually limited in scope to four rooms: our smallish den, our bedroom, our downstairs bathroom and the kitchen.

Sometimes, we find her glasses right away. "Here they are," I'll tell her, pointing to the top of her head where she has them perched secretarially in her strawberry blonde hair. It's a good look for her. Very professional.

Sometimes it's not always that easy. We go from room to room, searching in vain, until Kim remembers that she left them in the car, when she switched out her reading glasses for sunglasses.

Complicating everything is that fact that she doesn't own one pair of reading glasses, but at least three pair — maybe even four —  each with a different magnification level: 1.25, 1.50, 1.75 and 2.0. I think.

Anyway, one day we went through the BOLO (Be On the LookOut) for her glasses and finally found a suitable pair, no doubt underneath some magazines on the coffee table. A likely place where glasses go to hide.

Anyway, I stepped into the bathroom for a moment, only to find three pair of her reading glasses on the counter top, sharing space with cosmetic bottles, toothbrushes, mouthwash, combs, and other sundry personal grooming items. Three pairs.

I've tried convincing her to get a glasses chain to wear around her neck, where she can always find her glasses, but the secretary in her shouts that she doesn't want to look like a frumpy spinster school marm, and so the game continues against all logic.

As if we needed another complication, she does own a pair of prescription glasses, but they are bifocals, and she doesn't want to be caught dead — or apparently even alive — wearing them. She says they make her dizzy when she tries to walk with them on, and even though she's had them for more than a year, I think she's worn them for a grand total of 52 minutes.

This can get frustrating when, say, she forgets her glasses while at the coffee shop and she wants to read something in the newspaper. Then she'll ask to borrow my prescription glasses for a moment. Go figure.

I have only one pair of glasses. They stay on my head constantly, and are almost never misplaced.

I'm not complaining, mind you. All of this is simple idiosyncrasy and it even can be amusing at times.

Well, gotta go. We're getting ready to go do some grocery shopping. Wait a minute. Where'd I put my car keys?