There are times in every partnership when you look at your significant other and just go: WTF??? This reaction crosses gender, racial, religious, cultural and whatever other delineation you want to think of, throughout the world. Your spouse is alternately a hero, a genius, a mystery, a confidante, a lover, and sometimes just the biggest dork you could ever imagine.
My husband and I have been together for fourteen years. We came to each other later in life than most other people do, but it was certainly worth the wait. He is a brilliant man in so many ways. If he can see a picture of something, he can build it. If he can get his hands on it, he can figure out how it works. He can repair just about anything as long as he has a t-shirt, duct tape and a paperclip. He is MacGyver in the flesh.
He’s also blonde.
Okay, so I’m going to apologize in advance to all the blondes of the world out there for continuing the pseudo-myth, but stereotypes exist for a reason. And every now and then, that stereotype shows up in spades and all you can do is stand there, dumbfounded. Because sometimes that person you love most dearly, whose intelligence is usually the rival of the greatest minds, can be the most airheaded of airheads.
So, as you know, I’ve been dealing with a bit of an eye thing since October. The last visit with the retina specialist saw me being declared stable (okay, my eyes – we all know I’m not really stable), and released back to the care of my regular ophthalmologist. He also said I could go get the new prescription now. The left eye has significantly changed and updated glasses will get me back to almost “normal,” which means I can get back to driving, and spend more time reading, writing and doing detail work with less crazy headaches from the strain. I schedule the appointment with my optometrist for late in the afternoon, so my husband can pick me up on his way home from work. Said husband is informed of said time and date and confirms his orders.
The day of the appointment begins on a frustrating note: I wake up two hours before my alarm and can’t get back to sleep. Then the Wi-Fi doesn’t want to work. I get that taken care of and make the mistake of reading the news. Just when you think politicians can’t get any more stupid, they prove you wrong yet again. And it’s going to be hot – hovering around 90F. I schedule a taxi to take me the mile and a half to the doctor’s because my fat ass will not survive a walk in that heat. The taxi ends up being 40 minutes late, arriving to pick me up ten minutes AFTER the supposed start of my appointment. Yes, I called them. Five times. Each time told, “He’s pulling up right now.” Yeahno he’s not. No good Yelp review for you.
Thankfully, the doctor is having a slow day and let’s me come in late. The check up goes smoothly, until the doctor sits down with a sigh. That’s never good. The change in my left eye is drastic. Much more so than I had anticipated. Prior to the detached retina, my eyes had been pretty much interchangeable regarding prescription. That was a real plus in the days when I could still wear contact lenses, because I didn’t have to worry about which lens was for what eye. No annoying little black dot at the edge of the right one to distinguish it from the left. But now – now the left eye is going to require one and a half times the correction of the right. That means different lens materials in each lens to try and balance the weight. It also means smaller, rounder lenses with progressive bifocal to try and keep the magnification between the two eyes closer. And if that doesn’t work, we may need to get insurance approval for a “medically necessary” contact lens just for the left eye. All I’m hearing throughout the doctor’s drone is $$$…
We’re lucky in that we have pretty good insurance through my husband’s work. But it only covers the basics for vision– special lens material is extra, progressive bifocal is extra, contacts are extra. And when you’re wondering how you’re going to get enough money together to keep the only working vehicle fueled until payday, digging up several hundred dollars for a single pair of eyeglasses seems nearly insurmountable. Depressed more than usual, I wander off to the main lobby to wait for my husband, wishing I had thought to bring some dark chocolate to drown my sorrows in.
I wait for a while. I play games on my phone. I wait some more. I read (one-eyed!) several short stories in the latest edition of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I wait yet even longer. Normally my husband calls when he’s on his way home from work, just in case I need him to pick something up on the way. Most of the time his cell phone isn’t on, so when I finally decide to call him, I don’t think anything of getting his voice mail. After two-and-a-half hours and two straight-to-voice-mail calls, I begin to wonder if something has happened to him. There is a measure of danger to his job – he does carry a gun, after all – and my warped little depressive mind starts firing off all sorts of terrible scenarios. When the medical clinic starts shutting down for the evening, I decide it’s time to start walking.
It’s not a hard walk. But it’s still warm out and I’m in flip-flops – not exactly the best footwear for long distance hiking. I’m thankful I’ve made a habit of carrying a full bottle of water with me everywhere. I take my time, and take a break at the park that’s about halfway home. I’m just a couple blocks from the house when I get a call from my husband. Thinking the worst, I ask him if everything’s all right. He’s fine. He got off work early and just headed home without calling me. When he got to the house and found everything quiet, he just thought I was upstairs napping. He didn’t bother to check. He’s been home the whole time.
HE’S. BEEN. AT. HOME!!!
If I hadn’t been so tired by that point, I probably could have shot lasers from my eyes. He’d forgotten the appointment. The man that remembers every bit of minutia he’s ever encountered, forgot. Then he didn’t call. And, the final strike – he didn’t actually check to see if I was upstairs. He swears he heard me moving around, so that’s why he was convinced I was home. I think it was the spirit of my most recent familiar, but that’s another story.
So, three hours and a mile-and-a-half later than it needed to be, I was “rescued” by my husband. Yes, he’s still alive. But he’s also still blonde, so there’s bound to be more WTF moments to come…