To the Pilot Who Found My Glasses on the Plane

I arrive in Kansas City and before I leave the airport, I realize they are missing. I knew I had them and that they must still be on the plane. I head to the nearest Southwest Airline desk and she calls the plane. The flight attendants check but find nothing. I fill out the lost and found report.

The Lost  Glasses

 All weekend, people offer me their reading glasses, but mine are different; they have prisms that help focus the light. My problem is not so much blurry words as it is that the words bounce around, the page looks electrified. If they would stop moving, I could see them.

Then I get a call. The pilot of the plane went back and double checked and found them: hard brown case, purple Kate Spade? Yes, yes, those are them.

What made you go back? Perhaps you spent the next two flights, from Kansas City to Las Vegas and then Las Vegas, thinking about the glasses. The weather was beautiful so the work was not challenging. Your mind wanders back to the glasses over and over. They must be there, you think.

Larry D. Moore
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

You remember your aunt, in her later years, when her memory worsened. This was the aunt who let you eat Ding Dongs for breakfast when you stayed with her. She added extra sugar to the already sweetened Kool-Aid. She graduated from high school in her 70’s because it always bothered her she didn’t finish. Last time you saw her, she mistook you for her husband and was angry.

You get in your head that I’m much older than I am and that these glasses are my link to the world. Meanwhile, I am drinking a jalapeno margarita and arguing the merits of Birdman in a courtyard of the Doubletree. I am tired of the patriarchy, I say and high-five my friend. Glasses or no glasses, I’m not missing out.

But you can’t stand it and go down each row, running your hand in the seat pocket until finally--you find them. I get the call: the pilot found them. I’m dying to ask why the pilot was even looking for them, two flights after I got off. I’m grateful, relieved.

You remember the feel of the window air-conditioner in your aunt’s house. The chill blowing past you as you watched soap operas with her. The motor ran loudly and you had to turn up the TV when the AC came on, turn it back down. Later you realized, she couldn’t hear it at any volume. She just enjoyed sitting together. Ding Dongs and Kool Aid.