Just Don’t Call Him the Absent-Minded Professor

It started as a comic strip Monday. I had an 8 a.m. meeting at the Corner Room, so I dashed out the door, hopped on my bike, rode five sidewalk squares and realized my rear tire was flat. I ditched the bike, race-walked downtown and arrived just as the waitress was distributing the menus.

Before I even sat down or patted the pockets of my raincoat or unzipped any of the 500 compartments of my backpack, I knew: I had forgotten my glasses. I simply had no memory of grabbing them and stowing them anywhere. I searched all the likely places anyway, just in case I was mistaken, but I wasn’t.

I borrowed glasses from one of my companions so I could order breakfast, but while trying to concentrate on the discussion at hand I fretted about getting through the rest of the day without my “cheaters,” as my dad archaically calls them.

Before crossing Town-Gown Avenue I ducked into a pharmacy to see if I could buy a pair of one-magnification-fits-all reading glasses. Couldn’t: not a lot of demand among the store’s college-aged clientele.

In my office, I dug out the backup emergency backup glasses. The emergency backup glasses (EBGs) were at home.  The backup emergency backup glasses (BEBGs) are the ones I had before the EBGs. In fact, they’re the first glasses I ever wore, the ones I got when I was 40 and began playing an imaginary trombone whenever I had to read anything.

The eye doc didn’t tell me I was suffering from trombone syndrome. He called it presbyopia – old eyes, as in the Presbyterian Church, which is governed by a council of elders (I looked that up; I don’t know squat about Presbyterianism.). Well, my peepers are even older now, which cuts seriously into the adequacy of my BEBGs as EBGs.

But the bigger problem with my BEBGs is that they’re missing an earpiece, which means that I have to hold them before my eyes as if they were opera glasses. During my morning class, as I struggled with glasses and reading materials and the three flaming swords I always juggle to hold my students’ attention, I resolved to scamper home to retrieve my spectacles, for I knew that I would get nothing done between classes without them.

Fortunately, I live in the Highlands, aka the Fraternity District, aka the Red Bull/Four Loko Zombie Zone, aka the home of the Woo People, the proximity of which to campus and downtown almost makes up for the noise, the yard trash and the occasional act of vandalism (note to prospective buyers of my house: just kidding). In practically no time I was back at home, glasses right where I left them.

Now here is where I’m supposed to tell you about the next untoward thing that happened, but recall that I told you up top that the day started as a comic strip Monday. It didn’t stay that way, which is why, instead of continuing with this tale of petty nuisances, I am going to switch to extolling The Amazing Human Brain.

We come into the world naked, but we leave the house every day burdened with, at a minimum, keys, identification, money, phone. To the basics I add books, papers, laptop, lunch, calendar, umbrella if it looks like rain, and pen and reporter’s notebook in case a UFO lands on Locust Lane while I’m walking to work. 

Then there’s securing the premises: Doors locked (double-check pocket for keys)? Windows lowered? Lights/water/oven off? Thermostat turned down?

Think how easy it is to lock yourself out, to flood or burn down the house, and then, when you’re out in the world, to leave your credit card in the leatherette folder on the restaurant table. We have to have our wits about us at all times and mostly, we do: This was the first time I’d left my glasses home in a dozen years of teaching at Penn State.

Ever drive off with a cup of coffee or some other personal item on the car rather than in the car? I did – once: a pair of hiking boots so heavy they didn’t fall off the roof of my ’63 VW Bug.

My worst lapse of this kind, inconvenience-wise, was discovering, when I was a long bus ride away, that I had left my passport at a hotel in Sparta. By the time I retrieved it and got back to Athens my French petite amie had given up on me. Ah, Greece. Ah, being 24.

When I was a child my mother called me the absent-minded professor. As a seer, she got it half-right: I became a professor, all right, but I’m usually pretty present-minded. After Monday, though, I have the excuse I need to get this really cool pair of glasses that I saw in New York, demote my current cheaters to EBG status and consign the one-armed pair to the dustbin of history.

Oh, and note to self: Fix flat.