My super power is super glue

When I was about 6-7 years old I had the joy of finding out that I needed glasses (this is Jared). This is every kid's worst nightmare (other than the one where you show up at school naked, which when you're in elementary school-at least the first few years-isn't such a bad thing. You show up, they send you home, you get in trouble and are grounded and have to stay at home cleaning and doing other menial chores your parents loath doing themselves, and you are forced to never go to school again. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to sneak out of your house naked while you're in elementary school and it's a school day. You'd be surprised what your parents are willing to do to make sure you go to school). Monster movies are pretty rad themselves, but that has nothing to do with getting glasses, except that you find out that beast man is not the most commonly used villain. After getting my glasses I learned this, and other surprising facts I hadn't noticed before, like my hands had lines all over them. It kind of freaked me out. The day I got my glasses I learned some very important lessons. The first of these is that, while they mean well, parents lie sometimes. It's not bad, it's kind of like the first time you bake a cake. You hope it comes out well, and you try your hardest to make sure that it does, but at the end of the day the truth is, the cake is in the garbage and HASMAT is on their way to pick it up. Actually, for me, it was a lemon meringue pie-I love lemmon desserts, I love dessert, but lemon desserts are one of my manly weaknesses, and I have manly manly of them. Did you know that if you add four tablespoons of cornstarch, instead of four teaspoons, you can make lemon flavored cement? We used it to help keep our swing set from tipping over on us, you know, for when you swing too high, and because you weigh like 20lbs and you swing higher than two feet off the ground the swing set tips over. But the point is that roller derbies rock! That and parents mean well, they're also, well, mean.

Because of my glasses though I became very good at fixing things I couldn't see very well without my glasses on, namely, my glasses. I have strong astigmatism (I spelled that right the first time, yo! High five for me!) and so my glasses back in 1986-ish where about as thick as bulletproof glass was back then. They were great for starting fires though, and many an ant died under the fire of their unblindingness power they bestowed upon me-I just couldn't look at the sun. Plus anyone who reads comics knows that the geeky guy has to have some sort of super-secret super-power, otherwise, what's the point of being geeky? Plus you get to wear spandex costumes, masks and capes. What's the point of being a nerd if you can't kick some bad-guy butt at night while you should be getting sleep that will help you function and be all smarty-like the next day. This is the real reason nerds and geeky guys wear the same clothes day after day and never have their hair done properly. It's not that we don't care, we're just sleep deprived from protecting your ungrateful butts (that's mainly aimed at congress) so do a nerd a flavor and comb his/her hair or wash the clothes they're not wearing (naked nerds!) if you get the chance. Who knows, you may find the formula for cold fusion in one of their pockets-we've figured it out, we're just not sharing because we're that kind of people, and we don't want sports fans to benefit from essentially free energy. That and there's the dilemma about what will happen to the earth's atmosphere once we start one reaction, will the entire earth turn into a giant ball of flaming oxygen and charred flesh? Universe bar-b-q in the super-awesome quadrant, woohoo!!! Use our secrets wisely if you come across them.

Here is a picture of my glasses from high school that I never wore in public unless I absolutely had to (i.e. if I was driving, which meant I never drove on any of the six dates I went on while in high school-I tell myself that it was by choice). It's amazing how much your eyes can improve while you're young by making them work to see what is out there. The downside is that if you try it when you're older you just go blind faster (Milton and Joyce had that problem, if I remember correctly-I'm being lazy and not looking it up, since this isn't a newspaper and I don't have to do any fact checking...this isn't FOX or CNN either). It must be a vitamin-D or -K deficiency in old people with which young people are not metabolically challenged.

As a school boy, I did many things that normal school boys did. I tried to play basketball, baseball, football, street hockey, four-square, jump rope, wall ball, dodge ball, tag, etc. etc. The one thing that all of these had in common was I was terrible at them all, and they usually ended with me having broken glasses. If you've watched a Christmas Story you will know that broken glasses are the major cause of death among elementary school children. The news usually says something about a rare case of polio or the measles that an elementary school kid died from. This is code for they broke their glasses and their parents beat them to death with stubby thumbs (that's another story I won't go into right now). Every single pair of glasses I've had/owned from my first pair until I was 23 ended up broken, bruised, beat up and other wise destroyed.

In this picture you can see they have tape on the bridge (super glue wouldn't hold that part together on its own), the ribbon was to keep them from falling off my face and breaking in more pieces (which happened at least once and resulted in the ribbon being added) they are also broken on the side and super glued back together. My best pair, which I, sadly, don't have anymore had the ribbon, tape holding the lenses in, wire where the screws once were and super glue on the lenses and various other places, all working together to keep them in one piece and on my face. I used to waiter while wearing those. I would get awesome tips because people would feel bad for me and give me extra money to help me out. I had another newer pair, I just didn't want to ruin them yet.

Then along came these guys that is the only frame I have had for my glasses since I was 24. I have not been able to break these ones. They look like the ones in the picture above with ribbon, but they're a little different. This just means I have to be careful when I buy a new pair to make sure I get these ones. I think they're some sort of alien technology that someone smuggled out of Area 51 and has been able to market them under the radar from the government men. I'm grateful for that person needlessly risking their life so that we can have unbreakable glasses frame technology. If I were the aliens I'd totally be anal probing us too. Steal my *#$@! unbreakable glasses frame idea and market it as your own! I'll teach you, take that! Literally, take it. Fire in the Sky was a fabulous alien movie. Aliens was good too, but the jumping out of the belly and eating you instead of sticking things in your bum just isn't that frightening. You die. The end. With anal probing, you have to live with that forever, you'll be scarred and fear the open night skies until your dieing day. Stupid goth kids.

Now the point of this long narrative: I'm lucky to have married Pam. She's lucky too, but for a different reason. I'm lucky because she's freakin' awesome, amazing, smart, talented, gorgeous, and otherwise all around perfect. She's lucky because my secret super nerd super power (which is not super spelling powers, especially words with double letter, CURSE YOU DOUBLE LETTERED WORDS!!! we've never liked each other much) is super glue. I even have the remains of super glue still on my finger tips to prove it.

Over the years I've learned that super glue can save you a trip to the doctor for stitches (bike trip where I hit the ground first and then my bike landed on top of me). It can't save you from a later trip to the doctor for antibiotics so they don't have to amputate, though. It can fix broken things (not bones, unfortunately). They even have super glue now for metal. Metal of all things! Did you accidentally tear the panel off of the circuit breaker box? Not a problem, just super glue it and you're done! I'm never buying a house you've owned. I also learned that super glue can fix broken glasses. This would usually be an easy task, except for when you remember that you need your glasses to see, and you have to try and fix them before your parents get home, you have to be to work, or something else. You're supposed to wait 5-10 minutes after you apply the glue to let them set. You really only need about two, as long as you don't mind the burning, searing fumes that are near your delicate eyes for the next three to eight minutes while it continues to dry. This can come in handy if you're late for work. You come in all teary eyed, and just tell them nothing is wrong and you're sorry for being late. If they finally get up the nerve to ask you, tell them something like you were in a hurry to get to work and accidentally ran over your little brothers foot, shattering it. You called an ambulance but had to leave him so you wouldn't be too late for work and you're just worried because you don't know if he'll be okay-he was bleeding and screaming pretty good when you left. If you have a friend that's a cop you can really play it up by having them come into your place of employment in uniform and ask for you. If you don't get fired, you might get a raise.

But after all these years of practice, it was finally put to some good use when Pam woke up and her glasses were broken. I said, "Hold it honey, I'll be right back!" She hollered at me a couple of time as I zipped out the door, and when I came back she tried to beat me up, but luckily she couldn't tell the difference between me and the dresser so I came out unscathed. I went and bought some super glue and had those puppies fixed in five minutes flat! If this were an olympic sport I would be champion, and not just because I could play off of the judges sympathies.

Here are her glasses (fixed) and usable:

That was the point of this story. To prove my point here are some pictures of me turning out dogs into shark dogs. You can see the duck tape doesn't work very well.

I took some picture of them when I used super glue, but our lawyer says I can't post them until after the trial (a neighbor saw me and contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Steak (PETA) and they filed some 'animal cruelty' complaint, idiots).

If you thought this was long and rambling, it was. Congratulations, you were right, have a cookie, though not one of ours. None of this would be possible without this wonderful woman:

Yes, she was blind in the that picture (glasses were drying) and I'm not sure she knew I was taking it-I think she thought I was bringing her breakfast. She's great!!!