Bob Evans isn't my favorite restaurant, even among the chains. But some in my family like it, so I got them Bob Evans gift cards for Christmas. Which was kind of humorous, since they got me one too.
My vision hasn't been good, so first thing this morning I had an appointment with the optometrist. He checked me and found I had some eye irritation, and oh, by the way, the astigmatism correction in my new glasses-- my first pair ever of "real" glasses, 'tho I've used drugstore readers at close range for a couple of years-- was in the wrong direction. Effectively, it's doubling the astigmitism in the eye that has it, since the correction is at right angles to what it's trying to correct. He thinks the eye irritation has something to do with it; says I should use artificial tears until that clears up, and in a month he'll test my eyes again and get it right this time. I have my doubts about his explanation. I don't see how irritated eyes could shift astigmatism exactly 90 degrees. But hey, long's we get it straightened out pretty soon, I'm cool.
After the exam, wanting to celebrate that my double vision was not the result of a huge brain tumor, I decided to use the Bob Evans gift card and have some breakfast.
The place was pretty crowded. The waitress- I had to wince looking at her, she looked as if her back had been broken at one point and had healed badly- led me to a table next to three guys I'd never seen before, tourists I presume. I'll call them, left to right, Al, Bob, and Chuck.
Al was the one next to the wall, eating with his left hand. His right arm was in a sling, bound to his side. He wore a Ford Motor- UAW work shirt with the name of a Detroit-area auto assembly plant on it. His jacket, on the other hand, was a brand new spotless thing with my town's name embroidered on it. Looked to me like he'd lost his jacket and had to buy a new one today.
I ordered coffee. Bob said "When I broke MY collarbone, hurt like a sumbitch.."
"Hurts like a sumbitch now."
"Yeah, but they put my arm in a cast that stuck out to the side. You're lucky they didn't do that to you."
"I don't feel lucky."
"You are. Frank, he got liquored up and rode into a tree, they had him in the hospital in traction for a month."
Al looked annoyed. "I wasn't liquored up. I wasn't riding too fast. I was going along carefully, not doing anything dumb, I never saw it in the trail. It wasn't my fault!"
Chuck shook his head. He waved toward Bob. "When I saw you two wasn't following me, I stopped. Figured it was him, hit another deer or something."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't me. I came to a stop and there he was, out cold in the middle of the trail, his machine on its side in the snowbank. What the hell DID you hit, anyway?"
"I don't know. I still don't remember it, except something about flying through the air."
("More coffee, sir?" the waitress asked. "Sure," I said.)
Chuck shook his head. "You're lucky all the same. There's worse ways to get busted up on a snow machine."
"You got that right. Al, you remember that guy?"
"What guy?"
"Jim Yablonski, I think his name was. I wasn't there, but I heard about it. Back then they didn't have these snowmobile trails like they have now. You just rode wherever you could go--"
(And that's different from what you guys do now? How?)
"--and so he and his woman were going sixty across this farm field and he hit a wire fence. Dee-capitated himself. Wife thought he'd dropped his helmet for some reason- snow machine kept going, you see. She stopped to pick it up, and there his head was still in it. Can you hear me now?"
Bob laughed. Chuck did too. Al speared a bite of sausage with his fork. I sat still and wondered what the catch phrase from a cellular phone commercial had to do with someone's helmet bouncing across the snowbanks with his head still in it, and just why this was funny.
"Anyhow, you're lucky."
Al chewed on his sausage. "Don't feel lucky."
I paid for my breakfast, and I left a nice tip, since the show was so good.
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