Solving the Rose-Colored Mystery

WHERE EYEGLASSES GO TO DIE

I have long wondered where my lost eyeglasses go.

This is because I lose a LOT of eyeglasses. Reading glasses, valuable prescription glasses that magically darken with the sun (my latest and most tragic loss;) snazzy sunglasses from the Cocoons people that drew high fives from handsome passersby (alas, 60 or 70 years past the age at which I might have built upon these encounters;) outdated prescription glasses pressed into service when I lost the good ones; cheap sunglasses regularly bought for $6 at Goodwill . . . you get the picture.

If you are a loser of eyeglasses, this essay is for you. I have discovered where they go to die.

Earlier I had discovered where they don’t go — or at least, how not to find them. They don’t go into airport lost-&-found departments; we’ve all tried that. They don’t go into municipal trash bins near where you last saw them, so forget digging through those malodorous heaps. They will not come home via group emails to every meeting or friend group with whom you worked or partied in the week before you discovered them AWOL.

Shoot, they don’t even come home to collect rewards. At least a dozen of my lost former bafs (if your eyeglasses aren’t your BestAccessoryFriends you don’t seriously need them) have left home with my business card glued to the case or (in one desperate failed instance) my cellphone number etched onto the piece that goes over your ear.

A few of them get swept into gutters or trash bins and go thence into the landfill for future civilizations to puzzle over, assuming the planet survives for future civilizations. I hereby offer my abject apologies to the planet; I am profoundly sorrowful.

Photo by Documerica on Unsplash

Today, however. I have discovered the secret final resting place of lost eyeglasses. It is in the bowels of a Subterraneous International Repository beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, accessible only through the Property Department of your local Police Department.

I know this because I recently learned of the New York Police Department’s Underground Storage facility and its current trove of approximately 1,752,012 items, among which are at least five pairs of my missing glasses (readers & sunglasses.) Extrapolating backwards to similar facilities in San Francisco, Paris, London and elsewhere I estimate that each of those must be home to an average of 1,324,500 items including at least a pair or two of my formerly beloveds. But since all of these facilities have a finite amount of space, it follows that they must relieve themselves at some point when income exceeds capacity and necessitates outgo.

Thus the central subterranean repository. There is no other possible answer.

The same article that informed me about the New York inventory revealed that each and every item is carefully bagged, tagged and numbered. (From one to infinity.) Therefore, we know our eyeglasses will be kept into eternity, because what governmental entity can you name that ever destroyed a numbered item in its care? (No politics, please.) After varying numbers of years, a few thousand are certified as eligible “for destruction;” this is code for shipment to a sub-subterraneous destination.

I think, although this is the one piece of the puzzle still under peer review, that between the bagging and the tagging someone enters details in a box below the “Eyeglasses” label. The time required to search the database for the precise item labeled “Fran’s ridiculously expensive prescription trifocals that darken with the sun” however is likely to exceed my anticipated lifetime.

So now that you understand, perhaps you will undertake a search of your own.

And just in case: They have lavender metallic frames. Just send them to my granddaughter.