Binoculars hang from the head of Mule

 

   I grew up in a "black and white" world. Television sets and programs were in black and white, kitchen appliances were available in white only, All the colors of wheel were in an 8 piece box of Crayola Crayons.

 A movie was released "The Mask" where you were handed a pair of 3 d glasses to watch the movie with. While viewing through the glasses, it seemed as if the characters were just a few feet in front of your nose! I was overwhelmed by this extraordinary technology! I was allowed to see something...that really wasn't there!

 I held onto my souvenier glasses, believing that they might help me see other things that were not there! Ah! the imagination of an 11 year old! I kept the glasses in the top drawer of my desk. They were always ready at a moments notice. I used them to decode secret messages on cereal boxes, I used them to watch the black and white programs, feeling they gave color to the screen. A few years passed,and yes..late at night, when the house was asleep,...I used them to carefully view each image in my sacred copy of Playboy Magazine...making those women come to life! Superman had his cape, Marc had his glasses.

  Time passed,and on one very hot July day, I was cooling off at the swimming pool that belongs to the apartment complex I lived in. I can recall enjoying the refreshing crispness of the cool water, and the big blue, cloudless sky above. The sun beaming its rays across the surface,making my eyes squint. My attention was drawn to the diving the board, where the most beautiful girl in my universe was standing. She called out to her friends below. "watch me!!...Look at this dive!" I stared, and could not believe what I was witnessing....I could see right through her pink and white bikini!  I gasped, this was not a picture, I was not wearing those glasses, this was real!  She jumped in the pool with a scream! I held on to the side of pool, closed my eyes and murmered, "please....jump off the board again!"  

  That was the first and only time she wore that pink and white bikini, perhaps her mother or her friends saw the same thing I did.I just saw it with a great sense of admiration and an acute sense of provocation!

   Around that same time, my drawers were dumped.Many things I had carried with some type of childhood endearment were discarded...amongst them, those glasses.....the extra sensory powers that I had given to them had lost their significance. I was on my own...stepping into the threshold of adolesence.

Now, many years later, my glasses are back on....not the 3 d type, but binoculars...always keeping an eye on my past!