CUL-DE-SAC

About a month ago I finally got glasses. Not just reading glasses to correct my middle-age vision but glasses you wear all the time. I got glasses with black frames, just like the ones everyone else wears.

Of course I didn’t realize then that everyone else wore them. That occurred to me later, when I walked through my workplace and noticed how many people had black-framed glasses… both women and men. I also noticed this at the convalescent clinic where my mom is staying after her bad fall. She even pointed it out, telling a male nurse, “You have the same kind of glasses my son has!”

But it wasn’t just him. It seemed like all of the nurses who wore glasses had black frames.

About four years ago my wife and I were shopping for a car, and we were seriously considering a Subaru Outback. I soon took a walk in my neighborhood and was surprised to see an awful lot of Subaru Outbacks. I shouldn’t have been surprised. And I shouldn’t have been surprised a few months after my son was born, when I took him to the pediatrician. A nurse came into the lobby and said the doctor was ready to see “Nicholas,” and three sets parents with babies or toddlers — including me — stood up in response. She finally gave the last name and most of us sat down again.

There are things that are important to me that I do differently from other people. But when it comes to most things, I now realize that I’m just a part of the herd.

This entry was posted on August 11, 2014 at 4:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.