A Mystery Solved

The summer before we left on our trip to Antarctica, which would have been the summer of 2008, I bought a new pair of prescription sunglasses. Sometime between then and the time we were to leave, I lost them. I remembered having them last at work, and searched my office diligently, but could not find them. I wondered briefly if one of my distractible little ones had stuck them in a backpack with other items, but figured if they had, surely a parent would be asking around for the owner.

Needing something to protect my eyes from the glare off the Antarctic ice, I bought a cheap pair of those wraparound sunglasses people use after cataract surgery to put over my regular glasses. I wore them for over a year, until the frame started to crack. By then I had a pair of prescription glasses that worked well with a pair of cheap clip-on sunglasses, so I bought those.

This past summer I finally got a new pair of prescription sunglasses, courtesy of hubby. I still use the clip-ons sometimes, when I don’t want to have to carry my purse to hold my eyeglass case, but I enjoy having a prescription pair again. I wear sunglasses year round when I’m outdoors, so they are not a luxury item.

This morning, my husband handed me an eyeglass case and asked, “Are these yours?”

“I don’t know. Let me look.” Shock and surprise, my old sunglasses.

“Where did you find them?” It turned out he had been emptying the container we use for wrapping paper because it was cracking at the bottom, and there at its cracked little bottom lay the sunglasses.

“They must have fallen out of your coat pocket,” said Detective Hubby. It’s a logical guess. The container has been sitting under the rack in the mudroom where we hang coats, since it’s handy to the back door. If I had shoved the case into my pocket before leaving work in the dark, which it would have been in early January, the case could easily have fallen out while I hung up my coat, and disappeared between the rolls of wrapping paper without making a sound. Since these are long rolls which we grabbed out of the container one at a time without ever having to look into it, it’s not surprising that the sunglasses sat there unnoticed. It certainly wouldn’t have occurred to me to look there for them.

It has been four years and at least two prescription changes since then. The frames are still good, but my no-line trifocal lenses are expensive. I’ll see what it will cost to replace them with clear lenses and have a spare pair of glasses, but my hunch is “a lot”.

I am very glad I did not try to ask tactfully among my little students’ parents all those years ago about whether a strange pair of glasses had turned up in a book sack.  Tactful is not what I do best. Misplacing items in very strange ways is what I am really good at.