All Of This, Just So I Can See

It's been an action-packed twenty-four hours for Mom and me. Last night after supper, we headed up to our local Dr. Bizer's to pick out our new glasses. We dragged Dad along with us, for backup. (Well, somebody impartial had to tell us if our glasses looked cool or silly.) After almost two hours, we finally picked out our glasses, paid for them, and headed back home. Only if it had been that simple.

First of all, I'm almost ashamed to admit that my Mother picked out her glasses in about fifteen minutes; it took me over an hour to find the perfect frames. But let me rewind for a bit. When we got there, we looked around the showroom for about fifteen minutes before finding out we had to register first. If it hadn't been for a VFW regular that works there asking if we'd registered I guess we still would be standing there waiting. After we both registered, Mom went back to sit in the waiting area with Dad while I continued the search for the perfect frames. In the meanwhile a very patient clerk was on hold for over thirty minutes with Mom's insurance company, checking to see if they would cover anything on her glasses .Luckily, they covered $100. At least she didn't get screwed too bad.

I continued trying on frames and had the choice narrowed down to two. Our VFW friend grabbed our files and called us over to her table and started to take care of us, but when she saw my prescription and the frames I had picked out, she sadly informed me I couldn't get those; my prescription was too strong and the lens would be too thick for the small wire frames. Damnit. I was wanting the cool snakeskin print Sarah Palin glasses. So our VFW friend took care of Mom while Dad and I looked some more. I finally found a pair of Guess brand frames that were pretty cool, and came and sat down next to Mom. Our VFW friend then told us we had a problem. On Mom's and my prescriptions, our doctors didn't write quite as legibly as they should and they couldn't read some of the numbers. Great. She called over a co-worker and asked her what she thought the numbers were. Just as they were debating "Is it a 2 or a 7?" up went my hand, Erica Kane style, and I told them that they needed to call both of our doctors in the morning just to make sure. We weren't going to go with "I think's" on our vision prescriptions. By this time, I just wanted to pay the bill and go home. But it wouldn't be that easy. While the VFW friend was processing me, she told me that I qualified for the buy one pair get one pair free. Woohoo. So now I had to go back and find yet another pair of glasses. I told our VFW friend that I wanted these for sunglasses, and bless her heart, she studied my face for a few seconds and then went over and brought back a very cool pair of frames to use for my prescription sunglasses. Where had she been an hour and a half ago????

Now came the fun part of the evening: peeling. I wrote out the check, ($303) only to be told "I'm sorry - I forgot to add the tax." I then wrote out the check for $332. As I was tearing it off, she said "Ooops, you got a $10 discount. It's $322." Did I mention that I just wanted to get out of there and go home?

Flash forward to tonight. After supper, Mom and I trekked back up to Dr. Bizer's to pick up our glasses. It was a three-ring circus in there. I'm sorry to say this, but I've never been around such a large group of wild WT kids in all of my life. At one point, we counted 9 of them running through the waiting area. Once again, all I wanted to do was get my glasses and go back home.
After about an hour of waiting and wondering if the wild WT children were going to attack us, a very nice clerk named Sonia called us up to the counter and got our glasses adjusted just right and then we were finally able to go home.

All in all, the eye doctor's exam, a year's worth of contacts and glasses cost me a grand total of $677.64. It sure is expensive just to be able to see.