What To Do When Your Lens Pops Out

All of us who have been given glasses have been there: you're minding your own business, settling in with a cup of chai or hot orange juice or whatever makes your heart happy, and suddenly -- ping! Your glasses lens jumps ship. It flees. It falls to the ground with a barely audible but profoundly troubling click of lensless doom. Somewhere in the distance, Skeletor raises his face to the sky and cackles his hideous cackle, because Skeletor is a force of cosmic darkness nourished by small tragedies, and he probably thought that you losing a lens was funny.

This jerk.

"Lens down!" You cry, "lens down!"

But your troubles are just beginning.

What you must do first is locate your lens. To do this, stand in an open, windswept field with a compass in your hand. Your compass should be old, taken from a chest you found buried in your yard some time ago in what you thought was a dream but what turned out to be reality.

If you turn it over, the words they are watching should be inscribed in shaky block handwriting on the back. Well, it's a good thing they are watching, isn't it? How else are you supposed to find your glasses lens? You've got to look on the bright side.

Close your eyes and hold out your compass flat in your palm. It will point north, and if we were looking for north, well, we'd be set. But we are not looking for north. We are looking for that glasses lens. And for that, we will need more than the compass. We will need what dreams the compass brings.

Remember how you closed your eyes? Keep them closed. You should see a doorway. It will be square, fashioned from spruce wood and hung with a single picture of a rabbit. You like rabbits. You like this door. It's hard to place, this sudden rush of affection, but you feel quite fondly for this far-off little place. You smell smoke. You know from your studies in witchcraft that smoke, the tangible combination of air and fire used to purify the circle, belongs to the southeast direction. You will head southeast and find this door.

This is our second step. We have found out where the lens is, and now we must go to the lens. To go southeast you must bring tribute to the watchtowers of the east and the south, air and fire, and so we have chosen a flute and a red candle. Our journey takes us to a troll's bridge, where we must play the flute to lull the troll. Don't worry if you have never played before: trolls are not terribly discerning creatures, and it's the thought that counts when it comes to trolls' music. Night falls on us beyond the troll's bridge, and you must light the candle to see in the dark. The candle attracts a moth, who explains that the doorway you seek is technically a few degrees shy of true southeast, but eh, it's close enough.

Math is hard.

The sun rises and you arrive at the doorway. You must knock, a few times, politely. The door opens: it is a family of knoblins, and you recognize George the Knoblin Roommate, your roommate, who is a knoblin named George, who moved in with you in college and has yet to move out and sometimes eats your socks. He must have gone home to prepare for Ostara. You will need to greet him and ask him for a moment alone.

Once George and you are alone, George will sheepishly admit that he took it from your floor, but only because he feels that you don't appreciate him enough, and he'd like you to pay more attention to him. You must assure George that you value his friendship quite highly, even if he is a knoblin that moved in with you in college and has yet to move out and sometimes eats your socks. You and George should hug. George gives you back the lens, and you can go on your way.

Now you have reached the third step, which is refitting the lens into your glasses. Call out in imitation of the sparrow: it will alert your faithful guinea pig friend that you have returned and are in need of glasses-fixing. Your faithful guinea pig friend, in turn, will wheek exactly twice, no more and no less, summoning Selu-Shchugagoth, the Great Old One. Avert your eyes! Selu-Shchugagoth is a shy creature, especially at this hour, and will feel put on the spot if you look directly at it, With your eyes averted, hand over your glasses and the retrieved glasses lens.

Selu-Shchugagoth will take your offering in its clawed tentacle and slowly bring the glasses up to its gaping maw. It will eat your glasses, crunching glass and metal and plastic in its terrible shark teeth. You must wait patiently for it to finish chewing, and then it will slowly begin to transform into a dark and pervasive mist. The mist will spread out over the land, thinning so that there is only the slightest dimming of the sun, impossible for human eyes to discern but all too obvious to George the Knoblin Roommate, who decides that maybe today isn't the best day to go shopping for groceries.

Once the body of the Great Old One has fully dissolved, kneel down to your floor. There, in the exact center of a blackened, withered circle, will be your glasses, good as new. You can now go forth and enjoy the rest of your day, secure in the knowledge that your lens wasn't lost forever to the dust of the universe and that all has turned out well.

Go you.

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