Not a chance.
In part, because they seem completely useless. My husband got a pair a couple of years ago, and still seems to spend an enormous amount of time taking them off to see, then having to search for them again.
But even more, I think, is the fact that I associate them somehow with my third grade reading teacher. Mrs McDonald I think her name was, and she was a lovely women. She didn't even wear bifocals actually, just a pair of 1970s torquoise reading glasses that perched at the end of her nose and hung from a gold chain around her neck.
She sat at a stool in the front of the room and smiled over them to make a point as she read to us. I really liked her. Even after she kicked me out of her reading class, very kindly by telling me I needed to be in the higher level class, she treated me as one of her own.
I still remember the aching cold of that winter day a few months later. Groups of us huddled in the doorway before school, hiding as best we could from the harsh Oklahoma winds, when she hurried up the steps for work, her keys jangling in her hands. She didn't have the authority, or probably the space, to let us all in early, but she did tell her own students they could come in and wait in her room.
I hung back and huddled more tightly against the cold aging red stone. It had been an eternity in my eight year old mind since I'd been in her class. I didn't even expect her to remember my name. But suddenly she was calling to me, smiling and beckoning as she held the door to bring me into the warmth as well.
So how could I not want to emulate that beautiful woman? She seemed ancient at the time of course, but looking back I realize she was probably younger than I am now. So with memories of her kindness will I make an appointment, get the glasses, take my own turn at peering at the world over the top of my lenses?
No, probably not.
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