Squished Glasses found. Now all we need is a free country.

Those glasses that disappeared on the logging road were found. Not by me. I walked past them twice and didn’t see ’em the third chance, even. But a woman waiting for her husband said she had seen some broken glasses near the car.

We looked about a quarter mile down the road.

Apparently, the woman, her husband, I, and 1 ATV had been on the road in the previous 24 hours. The ATV did not miss the glasses.

The frames were pretty flattened. The lenses were laying apart in the rocky mud.

I wiped the lenses. A little ding in one was all the damage. But, then poly-carb lenses are the only way to fly.

The frames? Well, that’s what’s amazing. They were flat. Later, at home, I figured what’s the harm in trying to bend them back in shape. They did! The lenses are now a bit off kilter in the frames. The frames are still a little twisted and oddly shaped. On the whole, not quite good enough. But usable in a pinch.

Which got me to pinch-land.

The glasses didn’t come from Costco. They were insurance fluff from a regular eye doctor’s office. So there was no way I was going to get a dupe of the frames to drop the lenses in to. Well do I remember back when vision insurance started “covering” glasses. Oddly enough, the price of glasses went up at the time (for me anyway) by exactly how much insurance covered.

So I went to Costco to order some lenses to fit one of my many old frames (Costco, $60. Lenscrafters, $255.)

Experience has taught me to keep my current eye script on my Palm. Guess what? “In this state we can’t make lenses without a signed prescription.”

Huh? I can’t get glasses without doing some kind of Bulgarian Post Office thing (stand in 6 different lines to mail a letter)?

It’s not hard to imagine how such a disgusting law got passed.

Back when I was young there was much discussion of “socialized medicine” (what the AMA called a proposed government medical system to make it sound as bad as possible). The AMA was really, really intent on not having the government get in to medicine. They were, even then, a closed guild and wanted the organization that protected the guild to butt out – of everything but protecting the guild.

Time went by and, as so many other groups have found, the AMA, et al, found that there are some good points to having a central system enforce consumption of product from one vendor. All to protect the consumer, mind you. Having your own army, paid for by someone else, can sure beef up the bottom line. But, anyway, at least they have a product! One can probably think of some tax supported entities without a product at all.

Whatever. My mind went back to when I had to get glasses made in a hurry while in some odd place where no one in the country had a head shaped and sized like mine. Apparently, that was a free country, where ever it was.

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