The Architect
On my drive home from work, I looked out my car window to see a little girl walking along the sidewalk, stealthily creeping past a hedge. She was crouched down, arms spread wide, taking slow, cautious steps. "She must be playing hide and seek," I thought wistfully, "Oh, to be young again." When I passed her, I saw that it was actually a little old woman with a brown wig. And I thought, "Wow! That’s the first time I’ve mistaken osteoporosis for the sprightly spark of youth." I thought about pulling over and complimenting her on looking so young for her age. But how well would that go?
I need new glasses. I know this. I tried to call the optometrist this morning at work, but there were complications.
"Hello, is this Dr. Fleischer’s office? Hello?" I’m pressing my cell phone against my ear as hard as I can. I can barely make out a faint voice. My stupid phone has been quite the low talker lately, whispering sweet nothings into my ear while I plead for something more substantial. I press END and hold it up to give it a confrontational glare. "Phone!" I holler, "Why do you do this to me? I need sweet SOMETHINGS, phone, sweet SOMETHINGS!" I bang it against my knee, and then dial my voicemail.
"Hi, you’ve reached Steven, I’m not…" It goes quiet again.
"AUGH!"
This whole phone and glasses situation renders me somewhat blind and deaf in the interim. Now, my eyes aren’t too bad, really, but then again, in my last pick-up game of "Guess The Age Of The Person Walking By My Car" I was off by seventy.
"Esteven! I hear you sound distress. You are distress?" It’s Pascual.
"Yeah, I guess. Things are just not going my way today."
"Yes." He looks a tinge melancholy. "I think in my next life, I will come back as an American dog."
"An American dog?"
"Yes. Everyone treat me so well. Feed me, take me for walks." He turns to me. "And I will come find you! I will say Esteven! It is me, Pascual! And you will say who? And I will bite you, and you will say Pascual! It is you! And you will take me home."
"How will I know it’s you?"
"I will bark and you will hear my Spanish accent."
"Oh yes, of course."
"So tell me, Esteven, what is your matter."
"Well, my phone is broken, so I can’t understand anything people are saying to me."
"Hm. You should do what I do."
"What is it you do?"
"Sometimes, I don’t know understand what the people they say to me, so used to I would just say OK, OK. But then I find out I say yes about things I don’t know I say yes about. So now I say really? Really? And if I don’t want to talk to them, I just say no."
"I like your strategy. How did you come up with that?" There is a pause.
"Really?"
Pascual goes back downstairs and I dial the optometrist again. Ring Ring! I can hear it!
"Dr. Fleischer’s office."
"Yes! I lost my glasses, and I need new ones." I tell her my name and she looks it up.
"Oops! It looks like we need to give you a new eye exam before we can get you new glasses."
Why is it that people feel the need to say oops for me? I drop my pen. "Oops!" says someone walking by. I don’t have enough cash at the grocery store. "Oops!" says the checker. I burn the waffles. "Oops!" says my roomate. What, you think I’m just so busy being a failure, I can’t say my own oopses? You know what? I just checked my schedule and I’m pretty sure I can squeeze it in.
And now I have to get an eye exam? What, I’m going to get arrested for glasses without a prescription?
"Um. Ok." Augh.
The first time I got glasses, I was sixteen. I was getting headaches, and straining to see the overhead projections, and so I went to see Dr. Fleischer, and he put me through a series of awful psychological tests to see if I needed glasses, or if I was just lying. Like that awful letters-in-rows test. I kept guessing wildly and somehow getting them right.
"Read this column of letters."
"Um…I’d say that’s either a D or a Q or a B. I’m going to go with B."
"Yes, that’s a B."
"Oh! Wow. And the next one is…either an H or a 7. I"m going to go with…actually, how about P?"
"Actually, yes, that IS a P."
"What? Oh. Um. Ok. Ill take the fourth row then, for $800. What is…L?"
"L is correct." He eyed me suspiciously.
"I’m seriously guessing here."
"Oh, I know."
"No, no, really. In fact, that L looks a lot more like a Dachshund from here, but I figured it was a letter and not a dog, so I guessed L because I’d narrowed it down to letters, and, well, we haven’t had an L in a while."
"A Dachshund?"
"Or a terrier," I admitted. "Sometimes I have trouble telling them apart from a distance. Which is where the glasses might come in handy."
"All right. Well let’s try some lenses. Just look right through here, and…which is better, one or two?" He traded the lenses in and out. "Um…two?"
"Two? Or three?"
"Um…what was one?"
"One? Or three?"
"Um…what was two?"
"Two? Or one?"
"Um…is there a four?" My worst fear was that he had sneaked some clear lenses into the mix, and when I chose them, he’d look at me sadly and say,
"I’m sorry, Steven. Those were clear. Get out of my office, you lying liar." And then I’d stumble out into the sun, half blind from the dilating eye drops and get hit by a car or something.
So I’m driving to the optometrist for another go at those crazy tests. As I pull onto the freeway, I pass a big red school bus. On the side is written, "Tumble Bus! A Mobile Gym for Kids!" What have they got in there? And is this really the safest idea? Kids get hurt on the playground already. Who was it that said, "I know! Let’s take a see-saw, a slide, some monkey bars, and a set of swings, and–let me finish–put them on a bus going 65 on the freeway? And then just to reassure their mothers, let’s call it Tumble Bus." Sounds about as safe as playing tackle football on a spiral staircase. Although I bet the merry-go-round goes pretty fast. And I bet when the driver hits the brakes, the swings go all the way around. I tried to get a glimpse inside, hoping to see a kid tumble by the window like a sock in a dryer, but no such luck.
I arrive. Dr. Fleischer is all handshakes and claps on the back and goodtoseeyas and I get in that big awkward vinyl-covered chair. He says he’ll be right with me, and I wait.
On the wall, there’s a fake ivory plaque with a diagram of the human eye "carved" into it. It’s promotional material for a contact solution company. Why is it that advertising is filled with old looking parchment, and coats of arms, and things carved into ivory? So we consumers will say, "Wow, they’ve been in business for quite a while! They must be terribly trustworthy!" I feel like it doesn’t really work the same way with science. If your diagram of the human eye is carved in ivory, it just might be a little outdated.
"Steven! Good to see you. So you lost your glasses."
"Yeah. Yeah, I did. Listen, Dr. Fleischer, is this ridiculous? I mean, my glasses weren’t real strong to begin with. And I’m terrible at all these tests. Should I just forget the whole thing?" He sits.
"Did they help?"
"Yeah. Yeah, they did."
"Well, there you go. If they help, they’re worth it. Let’s give you some of those eye drops." They go in and my eyes go googly and bright.
The next week at work, Pascual admires my new glasses.
"Esteven! I like your glasses. You look like an architect."
"An architect? Really?"
"Yes. You are a professional now. You could leave and get a big job somewhere. Building bridges for the train."
"Wow, thanks, Pascual." He leans in confidentially.
"But I will not let you go," he whispers.
"No?"
"No, I will wash your brains so you will stay."
"Wash my…ah, yes. Wash my brains. Listen I’m not going anywhere for a while."
"You know, I am glad. You know, sometimes I am think it’s hard for to do how what you are to do. You know?" He looks at me earnestly. There is a pause.
"Really?" I say.
"Yes. But I need to go downstairs now. The glasses are good. You look older."
Awesome. With any luck, someone’s driving by right now, mistaking me for their grandpa.
I’ll go to bed tonight trying to figure out the logistics of a Tumble Bus. And I’ll never let anyone get away with a “really” again!
Comment by Bethany — June 15, 2006 @ 2:10 am
My favorite part about this entry was imagining you doing Pascual’s voice.
Comment by mom on a wire — June 15, 2006 @ 2:38 am
“I tried to get a glimpse inside, hoping to see a kid tumble by the window like a sock in a dryer, but no such luck.”
This is the best image! I love it.
Comment by Vikki — June 15, 2006 @ 2:15 pm
I’ll never forget the first time I realized, as they asked which is better, this one or this one, that this process of correcting my vision was not very scientific, in fact it was entirely subjective. What if I got the wrong prescription and for the next several years couldn’t see right because I gave the wrong answers in that little dark room? It’s not like they would know if I was wrong, they didn’t actually know anything about the way I saw. Man, talk about pressure.
How do you manage to remember the specific ways that Pasqual butchers grammar? Everytime I try to do that I end up with grammatically correct sentences with the content but not all of the funny twists that they said. I just can’t remember them, not even the funny ways my kids make up sentences.
Comment by carrien — June 15, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
Once again, i’m overtaken with laughter. Good stuff!!!
Comment by laura — June 15, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
Somehow I feel as if I should spend a week coming up with a comment as funny as your posts always are. But within that week I’d probably forget that the real point of the funny was the comment on the post. So I’d better just go with general immediate and clear praise.
I love the idea of the spanish american biting dog named return-Pascaul-with-a-spanish-accent. And I had to hold my hand over my mouth to cover the laughs about the tumble bus–I’m at work, you know…not working, so getting caught would be bad.
Thanks for your reminders of Northwest Humor. You’ve got it down to an art form!
Comment by melnel — June 15, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
Remind me not to cross a bridge on a train until I have ascertained that the architect who built the bridge had more qualifications than glasses.
Or a model of a bridge carved out of ivory.
Comment by Margaret — June 15, 2006 @ 9:41 pm
i’ve never had the experience of my eyes going all “googly and bright” but i bet it sounds like a lot more fun than it is.
Comment by SwtMagic1 — June 17, 2006 @ 8:56 pm
A Tumble Bus…I wish one of those would circle my house.
Comment by mamatulip — June 18, 2006 @ 2:59 am
Wow. I saw a tumble bus for the first time last week (in Utah) and then I read your post. Weird. The tumble bus I saw, however, had been rented and was safely parked before it allowed the children aboard.
Your post was very funny. You are very good.
Comment by Paul — June 20, 2006 @ 4:58 pm
If I wasn’t already married, Esteven, it might be me hiding in the bushes hoping you drive by. It’s not even 8am yet and I’m crying from your post.
Comment by Jenn — June 23, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
This is really good stuff, Steven! Very entertaining and I love the metaphors and Pascual’s dialogue is great. I laughed so loudly that they came to check on me.
Comment by joshua hewlett — June 23, 2006 @ 4:06 pm
You are absolutely hilarious! I’m sitting here wondering how much insurance would be on that “tumble bus”, perhaps if they line the outside in those fat black mats, when it rolls, (and it will roll), it would just bounce down the road on the mats! I know you don’t have to worry about it now that you’re going to be promoted to an architect anyway.
Comment by Kim — June 29, 2006 @ 1:54 am
STEVEN! (EVEN, even…) WHERE ARE YOU? (ARE YOU, are you…)
Comment by mom on a wire — July 21, 2006 @ 4:52 pm
What a hoot! I smiled clear through. My first time to your blog, courtesy of Karli, and I will definitely stop by again.
Comment by Caryn — July 22, 2006 @ 2:47 pm
Esteven…..we are starving for your words…
(no pressure or anything..)
Comment by laura — July 24, 2006 @ 7:41 pm
Oh my goodness. I laughed so loud I woke the baby!
Comment by The Lazy Organizer — July 27, 2006 @ 3:33 pm