I lose reading glasses.  A lot of them.  My routine, after losing all the pair that I own, is to go to The Dollar Tree and buy 20 or so pairs of them and hope to hell the supply will last me a month.  Okay . . .  Maybe I’m exaggerating.  I hope the supply lasts two months.  But overall, the sheer physics of this going on for years seems impossible. Where are thousands of pairs of reading glasses going?  They need to be occupying space in close proximity to my travels.  By now, when I walk from the house to the car, I should be wading, hip deep, in reading glasses.

Obviously, at a buck a pair, these are not the highest quality eyewear.  Sometimes a lens will pop out and need to be wedged back into the frame.  But more often than not, the pads on the nose bridge will fall off and get lost. They are apparently supposed to be secured by the tiny screws installed on them.  The screws are either not tight, or in some cases are overtightened, stripping the threads that hold them in.  Proper torquing of the screws is apparently not a quality control item for glasses that retail for less than the cost of the average taco.

Once you lose a nose pad or two, wearing the glasses can get pretty painful.  I often try and kid myself by resting them gently on my face, but after a few minutes the bare metal brackets start to dig into my nose which can be excruciating.  I take them off for relief, but then I can’t see.  So, I am forced to put them on.  It’s like a sick torture scenario.  Like you are stuck treading water in the middle of the ocean, and your only hope of supplemental flotation is a nearby floating cactus.

I decided to take some action on the problem.  So, after one of my bi-monthly runs to pick up a pallet of glasses, I laid them all down in a row on my desk over some newspaper.  Then I carefully put a drop of Super Glue over each nose pad screw.   I think I may have had one of the Torture Glasses on at the time, because I remember being somewhat anxious about getting the task completed and putting a fresh pair of glasses on my face.

The main ingredient in Super Glue is an acrylic resin called cyanoacrylate.  The curing of the resin is triggered by hydroxyl ions which are found in water.  Before putting readers to sleep, I’ll stop with the technical jargon right there.  Let’s just say you need water moisture for Super Glue to cure, and just the humidity in the air is enough to do the job.  The moisture in skin is even more than enough, which would be obvious to anyone working with the product and getting some on their fingers during the process.

During the gluing exercise, I was working late and was alone in the office. It was summer, and the building was cooled by air conditioning, so it is likely the humidity in the room was low.  After what seemed like a generous amount of curing time, I took off the Torture Glasses and put on one of the new pair.  It was a welcome relief. I went back to work, savoring the brand-new crystal-clear lenses and the absence of searing pain on the bridge of my nose.

Needing to use the restroom, I stood up from my chair and reached to my face to remove my glasses.  They wouldn’t move. I pulled a bit harder.  While the room had little humidity, the aforementioned cyanoacrylate had apparently found the moisture it needed. From my face.  Basically, my reading glasses were glued to it.

It took a bit of work in front of the bathroom mirror, but I eventually got them off.  During the effort, I could not help but reflect on the idea that I may have accidentally stumbled upon a method that would prevent the future losing of my reading glasses.