About a year-and-a-half ago, I decided to amuse myself at the expense of one of my friends. Having noticed that our glasses were almost identical, except for frame color, I swapped while he was gone from our table for a moment during a coffee break.

My friend came back to the table a couple minutes later. We continued sipping coffee and talking for another ten minutes. He didn’t notice that I was wearing his glasses or that I kept watching him closely and trying to keep the grin off my face. Of course, I was hoping that he’d pick up the other pair of glasses, slip them on and be suddenly confounded by the fact that everything he was looking at was distorted and wavy. Finally, I gave up and told him what I’d done. He was genuinely surprised, never having noticed the similarity in our eyewear.

Like I said, this was a while back.

Two weeks ago, we met with three other couples for an afternoon concert and then had them over for supper. My friend and his wife were one of the couples. We had a wonderful evening. After a supper of Randa’s stew and homemade cheesebread, we sat at the table and talked for over an hour. Stimulating conversation on a variety of topics. Much better than a couple of hours of TV.

Later that night, I couldn’t find my glasses. I looked in all of the usual places I find them when I can’t remember where I’ve left them but couldn’t find them anywhere. The next day, I called the woman in charge of the concert to see if I might have left my glasses at the table where we sat during the reception following the concert. “No,” she said, firmly, “I cleaned up the table where you were; there were no glasses there.”

I looked again at home. No luck. I looked in the car, looked at work. Then, I looked at home again. Randa looked. No glasses, anywhere. We looked again on Sunday evening, two weeks after the dinner party. No glasses. But while we were looking, I remembered my mischief from the fall of 2008. I knew I was grabbing at straws but I gave my friend a call anyway to see if he might have accidentally picked up a pair of glasses that looked remarkably familiar.

“I don’t think I picked up an extra pair of glasses but I’ll take a look,” he offered. “Well,” I responded, “If you find a pair of gold framed glasses that look a lot like yours, let me know.”

I got my glasses back yesterday morning. Sometimes, even in reaping the rewards of our mischief, we may be blessed.

H. Arnett
3/2/10