Have A Nice Trip?

I was 12 years old before I finally convinced my Mom I needed glasses. She thought I just wanted them because my friend Virginia had gotten glasses the year before. I was having trouble seeing the blackboard from the back of the room. Each fall the teacher "tested" our eyesight by having us cover one eye and then turn our hand to point whatever direction the big E was pointing. When Mrs. Kimball told Mom I flunked the eye exam at school she finally took me to Doc McAlpin.
The verdict was I needed glasses only for distance. My reading eyesight was fine. I picked out frames as nearly like my friend's as I could - kind of a blue gray plastic. The catch was I had to take my glasses off while reading. That was a pain. Worse than being inconvient, though, was how many times I sat or lay on them when I had taken them off to read.
When I had my eye exam freshman year, Dr. McAlpin suggested I try bifocals. The top would be for looking into the distance while the bottom would be plain glass for reading. When his office called to say my new glasses were in Mom said I could walk downtown during lunch period the next day to get them.
In order to cut down on the congestion in the hallways, there were three dismissal bells for lunch which rotated on a weekly basis. If you got out on first or second bell, you had plenty of time to walk downtown, grab something to eat and walk back to school. Third bell week or inclement weather meant you ate at the hot lunch line unless someone had a car.
The cafeteria food wasn't bad and it only cost 25 cents a day. It was much more fun to go downtown to the Candy Kitchen or one of the drugstores where you could get a coke for a nickel and a sandwich or french fries for 20 cents. I had never had mayonnaise and lettuce on a peanut butter sandwich until I ate one at Dunham's Rexall Drugstore. Ugh! What a combination. Funny thing was I got so I liked peanut butter sandwiches that way.

It was the third day of my freshman year, August 30, 1957, when I was to pick up my new glasses. I still didn't know too many people but there was one girl who had the same class schedule I had and we had started to be friends. I told her about my new glasses and she said she would walk downtown with me.
After we picked them up, we bought ice cream cones to eat on the way back to school. If you've ever worn bifocals you know about not being able to see clearly if you are looking at something right on the lines. We had only gone a block when we crossed a street. I looked to see if there was a curb on the other side and didn't see one (I was looking on the bifocal line) so I didn't step up. There was a curb, I didn't step up and went sprawling onto the sidewalk. (But managed to save my ice cream cone!)
My new 'friend' started laughing and could not stop. Sure, it was probably funny, but not that funny. I thought it was more embarrassing than funny. Ellen laughed until she cried. She would stop for a bit, then start in again. "Have a nice trip?" Ha-ha-ha-ha. I finally got so mad at her I crossed the street and walked back to school by myself.
Not a very auspicious beginning for a friendship and we've had many more ups and downs during these 52 years, but to this day Ellen Sullivan Seaton is a friend of mine. And yes, she still tells this story every time we are together and there is a third party to relate it to. And she still laughs and laughs every time. It tickles her so, I have to laugh along. Then I say, "But at least I saved my ice cream cone."
I can see it now: Ellen will be attending visitation before my funeral. She will be standing by my coffin telling someone this story and laughing. And wherever I am, I will be laughing too because that is what friendship is all about.