Something got me thinking about contact lenses today and, quite frankly, I am still mildly surprised when I hear someone is getting them. They are so common, it really shouldn’t register on me. But it does. Maybe because I have worn glasses since I was a little girl and can’t understand why someone would want to put something in their eyes, then take it out, then put it in, they take it out . . . then look for it on the floor.

I know contacts have evolved since people starting wearing them when I was in high school, but I don’t follow the progress and I have never sought out new information. Some people are amazed that I have no desire to get them. I should qualify my opinion by stating that if I found them necessary to see while performing an essential task, I would be fitted for them. I don’t need them. My glasses are on my face almost all the time; they are tough lenses and serve as goggles as well. They can get super smudgy and I don’t have to worry about infection in my eyes. I very seldom misplace them since if I find them not on my face, I merely have to reach out to the places within arm’s length. A lot of the time, I fall asleep with them on.

I don’t even think about them, but after writing this I wonder if people question why I am wearing clunky glasses and not cool contacts. There is the possibility that they serve as a disguise for what Der Bingle and his crowd refer to – when they are being polite – as my close-set eyes. Cyclops nose might be another phrase they use . . .

I don’t care. I like my glasses. In fact I think I need a really individualized pair that make a statement; I just need to think of a statement to make.

Hey, one more thing: It’s customary when a person wears glasses for the funeral director to remove them when the casket is closed and place them in a gentleman’s breast pocket or put them in a lady’s hands. Maybe I’ll leave instructions for them to stay on my face. I’m not sure, though, and will probably give it some thought tonight . . . maybe experiment lying here first with them on my face and then taking them off.

Yes, kids are home . . . for 70+ days – Summer counted them and made a point of telling me. She is going to Cedar Point in Sandusky with the “been on the Honor Roll all year” middle school kids. All A’s. Won the science award for the 6th grade for 2007-2008. They go tomorrow.

And tomorrow, her brother starts some three weeks of intensive freshman biology because, well, he flunked the class. I am proud of him: His first term in high school and we had major illnesses in the family . . . and then we find out his grandpa was potentially deathly ill and I took off and left. And he hated labs and was shy and wouldn’t ask for help and got depressed himself and, well, got behind an 8 ball so big it probably was a 100 ball – bowling ball size.

You know what he did? He hitched up his pants, made sure his bootstraps were strong and pulled himself up. At a pivotal point in his life when he could have decided he was a total loser and gone into a funk – sort of like his grandma would have done – he went on and got lots and lots of A’s.

I told him this may be the best thing that ever happened to him. He’ll go in there and come to terms with hands-on science and it will help him will all his science and lab courses. And maybe he won’t blow up the chemistry lab in the next two years. Okay, you know how I am . . . nothing is sacred from a joke.

So think of him tomorrow, please. While his sister is zooming on a roller coaster, he’ll be starting out on a long trek, probably one without exciting thrills – probably one that starts out as a daunting uphill climb and hopefully, somewhere along the path, starts a downward slope toward the finish line.

He can put his hands in the air as he goes across that line, because he will have worked for it . . . he wasn’t just along for the ride.