The weekend before school started I worked like a dog driving my kids all over the county getting them ready. They needed new shoes, eye exams, glasses, haircuts, backpacks and school supplies.

One week later, the sneakers are filthy, the school supplies are well broken in, the zipper broke on one of the backpacks and my middle daughter has lost her brand new eye glasses.

This is the child who had a pair of eye glasses last year but lost them prior to the in-school eye exam. She then proceeded to make a stink; squinting, squirming and shouting out incorrect letters during the exam.

What can I say?

She’s a middle child and loves the attention appearing visually impaired will bring. She just didn’t anticipate the amount of attention that was to come my way.

I received two firmly worded notes from the school nurse suggesting I get my nearly blind daughter eye glasses.

Her corrective needs are minimal… borderline actually, but I decided she would start school with glasses this year. I’m tired of the suggestion of neglect in the notes from school.

It’s been 6.5 days since the start of school and my daughters glasses are nowhere to be found.

When I asked her where her glasses were she didn’t even pause for a breath, “Last time I saw them,” she said, wide eyed and innocent, “I’d handed them to you.”

Where do they learn this skill of deflection? It’s apparently a fraternal gene. Her father is the master.

“Where’d you put my keys?” His accusations roll.

“Where’d you put my shoes? Have you been wearing my tie? You seem to have misplaced my belt, again!”

It’s a wonder anyone in my house can get dressed at all considering my tendency to misplace their essential accessories.

Finding her glasses won’t be easy. This is a child who misplaced a pair of gloves that later turned up in the refrigerator. She lost a pair of shoes that were burped up from the mud surrounding the swing set three days after we bought her a new pair. She went to school one day with socks on and came home that afternoon without them, and had NO IDEA what had happened to them.

Her glasses could be anywhere. Although glasses aren’t cheap either, I know the quickest way to find the old pair is to buy new ones. It will cost her over two months of allowance to replace them, and she will have to replace them this time.
She’d better do it soon.

I might have to meet the school nurse on Back-To-School night and I don’t want to be reprimanded in front of the other mothers.

Then again, I should learn from the king of deflection.

“I bought her new glasses just weeks ago,” (which is the truth) “but she gave them to her father to hold and… “