Hot outside today; hot and muggy. I have an ice machine and bottled water. Though I’ve always kept up on environmental news the idea of a shortage of potable water seemed very remote when I lived in the rain forest. Not so much now..
I’ve never been much of a planner; I am very fortunate. I mean I haven’t had to plan for the future, not with seductions, employment, retirement. I’m not very well equipped to be this age in this place. Though today makes me think about potable water, I am not hording any.
I’m not sure that the above paragraphs have anything to do with anything. I know how to use both the backspace and highlight and delete.
The eye doctor I was waiting for had a waiting room on the main floor. It’s sort of hard to explain the offices; they do a lot of business and have a sort of double cross floor plan for the exam rooms, organizing patients by sections and What Exam Is Next. My final waiting spot was on the sales floor, the big room where they sell glasses.
I’ve been to these offices a lot, twice for myself and several times for my mom. Surgeries are done downstairs, in part, I think, because it’s funny watching people with eye patches navigate the stairs or elevator. Hmmm, wait, now I doubt my own memory; at least pre- and post- surgery visits are done downstairs.
Anyhow I had a seat at the far end of the selling floor while waiting for the numb drops and dilation drops to kick in. The salesman who had to sit at the far end, had one very nervous foot; if his soles were hard and the floor was uncarpeted he would have sounded like an amateur tap dance competition.
I decided to get new glasses after the exam. Of course they are recommended, that’s really what they are in the business of, though they do sell a lot of surgeries and eyelid tucks and eyebrow something or others, I assume augmentation as a salon is usually where one goes to get them diminished. So the doc gives the good news, sort of, that there’s nothing physically wrong with the eye (the sort of is explained an entry or two back in his belief that’s it’s probably migraines) but I might benefit from a new prescription.
Silly as it sounds there were two good reasons for me to get a new set of glasses. Well, two and a half. 1) I wasn’t really ready to drive — In Oregon they treat it like post surgery, if you get the drops you need to come with a driver and have the driver sit and wait and leave with the driver. My demented father died with a valid MI drivers license, renewed twice since the diagnosis of dementia. Stay off the sidewalks, kay? 2) Earlier in the week I was having real trouble keeping track of glasses and sunglasses, not cool when you have a photo sensitivity thing going on. 21/2) Someone gave me the Special Deal pamphlet.
I got the heel tapping salesman. The first words out of my mouth were “Are you commissioned?” he barely got to say no before I babbled about how I might not be in my right mind to make a decision and if I feel like I’m ready to go I might just say good day and leave and other stuff that had I said to a cop would have had me overnight in the drunk tank.
Then I directed the entire sale “I want no line progressives with rayban gray transitions and I know it’ll cost more than the pamphlet says, but show me the frames that you’re trying to dump cheap. I babbled all the way to the sad Island of misfit frames wobbling, babbled about having no fashion sense and not being able to see straight anyhow and if he was a woman which pair makes me look sexier and proceeded to pick the exact opposite of his advice. As he himself pointed out he was not, in fact, a woman. Implying, too, that were he a woman he would not be attracted to me for reasons having nothing to do with my sex appeal but rather my lack of decent boundaries. For the record, I am too sexy for my glasses. Um, if I were any good at seduction I’d probably not wear my glasses (I can’t get contacts, and lasik can’t correct everything). I have beautiful blue eyes with a few gold specks and, now in my dotage, a waning slice of hazel in the twinkling corner.
I babbled all through his distracted computer entering and even made up an argument where I did his half of it for him. I resented being thought of as cheap and the implication was insulting, he (um with my voice) did suggest I came at him with how much did he make on the sale and that I wanted the cheapest high end pair of specs. I countered, again, to myself, that I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my old glasses and it’s mercenary to sell a pair a year, to which he countered, again in my voice, that vision was a fluid thing and one gets what one pays for, I snorted back at myself, that I was only being cheap with mechanism that held the seeing device and did they sell substandard flimsy products. I prattled on, I forgot who won that invented argument, but I’m pretty sure I made the best case.
He was very relieved to exclaim “We’re Done!” He tried to imply that was good news for me because I seemed impatient. I suggested I might need to sit for a moment longer. He rushed me to the front of the paying line. If I could recall the exact attitude I’m going to use it all the time, like, perhaps, next time I buy a car. I haven’t bought a car in the past thirty five years without a strategy of how to fuck with the salesman. My strategy isn’t to get the absolute best deal, though, yeah, everyone wants to do that (come at the end of a winter month and act like you are ready to walk out, you’ll get the best deal) but to fuck with as many salespeople as I can as hard as I can. It brings me the same sort of joy as watching someone trip does; you have to laugh no matter how much you’ll apologize (mostly because the closer you are to the falling party the funnier it is).
I guess sometime this week I’ll got progressive transitions coming that at least one person in the metro thinks aren’t sexy. If I was being really combative or didn’t like the guy, I might have suggested a bit of a pissing match. I just mean I probably do better than him, demonstratively that sort of pissing match would be crass, objectively and with all due humility, I’d be sexier than him if I were unshorn and in a leisure suit wearing snorkeling googles. And, my heel wouldn’t be tapping nervously. Good thing we weren’t in a pissing match. I’m a competitive pisser, both figuratively and literally. Hmmm, I don’t piss literature, I guess I haven’t tried, I just mean, well, nobody ever really pisses in a pissing match, I’m pretty confident that if pissing match actually meant pissing for distance, quality or quantity, composure, posture, bouquet, you know, standard points of competition, I’m fairly confident in my ability to compete on better than a novice level, though, I have not, in fact, ever been paid to piss professionally.
I’d like to think if it were a real sport it’d be called something cooler than pissing match. Sort of like Lacrosse isn’t called Really Hard Little Ball Moving Fast at Your Head. Sure, when it’s your at bat you might be called the pisser, but the competition — I don’t know, maybe like horse races could be named after the locale, like the Indianapolis Bowl or the Kentucky Trough.
I think even the most ardent feminist would have to admit that females wouldn’t be able to compete with males, in some respects the female competitions would be much harder, like, say, penmanship. The guy merely needs to move his fingers and step over between words. A woman would have to be a gymnast. For distance she’d need a running start.
Seeing that it’s not a real thing I might compound my above stated bigotry by suggesting that in my experience, woman are usually the first to call a thing a pissing match. Just saying. Guys are more likely to engage in behavior that could be construed as a pissing match, but a guy only phrases it that way when he’s either about to lose or about to smack a motherfucker which is instant disqualification in any pissing match real or imaginary.
Hope I’ve cleared that up. What was the question?
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