A Good Deal

Living in Saudi Arabia with blowing sand wreaks havoc on eye glasses. Therefore Eric wanted to spend part of our shopping day buying a new pair. We entered an optical shop at the mall with our Turkish dictionary feeling pretty proud of ourselves as we got the clerk to "read" Eric's prescription from the lenses with a machine, had Eric try on about 50 pairs of stylish new glasses, and pat ourselves on the back because we left buying 3 pairs of regular glasses and 1 pair of sunglasses for less than a single pair at Costco. We were smiling all day at our good fortune while waiting for the glasses to be finished. I was even thinking that, for that price, I should get some new glasses, too.

Well, after enjoying "Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol" we stopped back into the store eager to see Eric in his new "eyes". He tried on the first pair and (drum roll here....) he couldn't see a thing. He had the same problem with pairs two and three. It then occurred to us that, instead of making bi-focals, they had made all the glasses into single vision distance frames. And, here's the kicker...he needs to readers more than the distance. The "machine" had only read one prescription. Well, with some more gesturing, the dictionary, and a new reading from the "machine" we were able to explain that the glasses needed to be bi-focals. And, as you can guess, multi-focus lenses are much more expensive than single vision.

Unfortunately, we forgot to heed the age old advice, "It the price seems too good to be true, it is." To make matters worse, the nicest, designer frame was too small to make into bi-focals. On the bright side, Eric will have 3 new glasses, but not at Costco prices....