I broke my glasses by d. t. emerson

Yes, they’re only reading glasses but I’m unemployed so it really hurt me. I decided that sitting around the house waiting for a job to call was a little like the proverbial watching water boil so I decided to venture out into the snow and have a coffee. Surely, the phone would ring if I left it unattended. I ambitiously took two books with me prepared for a solid couple of hours reading.
I was headed for McDonald’s, oddly enough, for a latté. Having been recently fired from my job as a barista at a local coffee shop, I thought it was a good way to thumb my nose at the coffee snobs I used to deal with on a daily basis. Coffee snobs’ eyes roll at the thought of Starbucks so I can imagine that the thought of a McDonald’s latté might well throw them into anaphylactic shock. For me it was a way to combine revenge with pleasure without actually hurting anyone. Full of evil intent, I smugly removed the snow from the windshield of my truck knocking most of it onto my sporty sweat pants which I’ve had to wear most of the time recently. My waist is growing: wallowing in self pity doesn’t burn a lot of calories. I threw my two books onto the seat, my exercise for the day, and hopped in for a slippery ride down the street.
Upon arrival, I was pleased to see that at 11:30 am McD’s was nearly vacant. I proudly walked up to the counter and ordered a small vanilla cappuccino. Wow, I was so busy seething with revenge for my former employer that I forgot I wanted a latté. Oh well, only a coffee snob would know the difference anyway. I found a cozy little corner in the back and plopped down on a hard seat nestled between the emergency exit and the bathroom…now, two hours of good reading.
I pulled my glasses out of my pocket and noticed:
a. they were very dirty
b. they were bent
I take care of my glasses like house slippers. If I were to truly enjoy my afternoon of reading Dean Radin’s “Entangled Minds“, I would have to have proper glasses. I carefully wiped them with a spit-dampened napkin then proceeded to bend them back into a traditional spectacle shape at which point they snapped in two just at the spot that rests over the nose. “Shit”, I thought. At this point, in the past, I might have stood up in anger, chucked my cappuccino and glasses in the bin and sped home in a fit. But the new me thought, “I can work around this.”
I started by resting one half in the traditional manner and balancing the other half somewhat like a monocle on the other side. This worked, but only if I kept my head at the proper angle to avoid slippage. I read one page this way until the short side of the glasses fell off onto the table. Embarrassed, I managed to look cool as if this happens to me all the time. “These are special, travel reading glasses”, I said in my head. I read page two with just one half of my travel glasses keeping one hand on my other eye. This worked quite well for a time but it seemed to effect my comprehension. Not more than four minutes into my two hour reading session, I was vexed. I considered asking someone for a piece of tape and reconsidered thinking surely the lunch crowd was arriving by now and I didn’t want to inconvenience a busy, employed person with my silly needs.
By this point, the chair had started to find the nerve endings in my tail bone and I was beginning to think perhaps I should call it a day. In the few moments of reading clarity I had I was able to glean from Dean Radin’s book, which considers quantum physics and telepathy, that our world is a manifestation of our observation. On the level of photons, what happens depends on who’s looking. Hmmm…now I know why my glasses broke. Because I was looking at them!