Having a Bad Day? Try a Little Perspective

Somewhere in the dim reaches of my Baby Boomer memory I have a vague memory of a comedian whose gag line was, “I shoulda stood in bed.”

I found myself repeating that line to myself – though I used the more grammatical but less funny version – this morning. I should have stayed in bed.

There are days when it just doesn’t seem worth it to get out of bed. Often they are on Mondays. But let’s face it: Monday can be any day of the week. For instance, my son works Saturday through Wednesday nights, so his Monday is actually Saturday and his Friday is actually Wednesday.

Anyway, when you get to be my age (I’m an on-the-bubble Baby Boomer), staying in bed is not always such a good idea, either. If I lie in bed too long when I’m trying to get to sleep or after I’ve awakened in the morning, my body starts to ache and continues to nag me until I get up. Maybe that’s why that erstwhile comedian said he shoulda stood in bed.

So, this morning started out not horrible, terrible, awful or very bad. I got up and did Tai Chi and ran a dishpan full of hot water to get started on some postponed kitchen clean up. My son came home from work and we had breakfast – just cereal because he was really tired and just wanted to get to bed.

I came back to my bedroom/office and got dressed. Then I sat down at my computer and noticed a blur. My glasses were dirty. I cleaned them and that’s when things started going very wrong.

There is a reason why the first thing I put on in the morning is my glasses. They keep me from squinting and running into things. They let me see the keys so that I can enter my password. In other words, they keep my world from being a constant blur.

So there I was, innocently cleaning my glasses when an earpiece fell off. This wasn’t entirely unexpected as the earpieces I’m currently using are from a pair of glasses I wore back when I didn’t even need bifocals, let alone trifocals. The holes don’t line up quite right and the little screw which holds them together doesn’t screw all the way in – which means that they are apt to fall out.

Have you ever tried to find an itty bitty eyeglass screw in a shag carpet? It is amazing how every slightest piece of lint looks like a little screw when you don’t have your glasses on and everything is a blur. But I persevered and found the little dickens.

I fitted the two pieces together and lined up the holes as well as I could considering that I couldn’t actually see them. Then I tested my fine-motor skills by trying to put the little screw into the invisible hole.

I got my teensy-weensy eyeglass repair screwdriver and hovered above the screw trying to find the slot. Finally, I got out my magnifying glass. It has a little concave area on it that super magnifies. I located the screw (a challenge in itself), noted the direction of the little slot, and tried to insert the screwdriver in the little slot by memory and feel.

Finally, I reverted to needle-nose pliers and tightened down the little screw as far as it would go. I had just accomplished that when – the other earpiece fell off. And while I was trying to screw that back together, a lens popped out. The even little-bittier screw that held the frame together had fallen out!

Ah, well. My glasses are together now, cleaned (very carefully) and perched on my nose. And it only took an hour. I should have stood in bed.

I have a friend in Nigeria. Okay, I know. You’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking that anyone who has a friend in Nigeria must be certifiable. Nigeria has become almost synonymous with online scams. But Nigeria has gotten a bad rap. Not everyone in Nigeria is a scammer, any more than everyone in the US is a greedy SOB (Say it ain’t so!).

My friend is a young man who works hard – and honestly – to improve his life. He has trained in computer technology and has started an online business. He has taught me a lot and he even tolerates it when I presume to give him advice.

Recently, my friend was robbed at gunpoint and his laptop (the center of his business), his Blackberry, and all his cash was stolen. He is now trying to maintain his business on borrowed computers and an old Nokia Communicator.

I was doing a little research the other day and discovered that the average life expectancy in Nigeria is 50. I mentioned this to my friend because it saddened me to think that there is a good chance that he will never get to be as old as I am now. In fact, I will probably out-live him.

He shared another statistic with me: the average person in Nigeria lives on $1.00 a day.

One of the things glasses help with is perspective. Perspective is what helps you judge distances and make comparisons. I was thinking about my friend while I was teetering on the brink of despair over the difficulties with my glasses.

Perspective is a wonderful thing; it helps you judge the distance between despair and gratitude.