Wee bag.

About two weeks ago, a Wednesday I think, I was hovering about the shop floor as I worked out in Cameron Toll shopping centre. An old man, mid seventies but in good shape, approached the front desk. I was just back from my lunch, my next appointment hadn't turned up so I walked over to him to see if I could help. He asked me if I'd be able to fix his glasses as the lens had fallen out. I smiled, lent forward to see the wreckage in his hand and told him I'd see what I could do.

I like fixing glasses. It's not hard, the only reason I can do it and you can't is because you don't have very small screwdrivers and screws. Good vision is handy too, it can be pretty tricky fixing your reading glasses if you've no glasses to help you see them in the first place. A few optometrists don't like this. I know of one or two who feel this kind of task is below them, that they've better things to do, maybe, but I like it. Tightening a screw, bending a side back into place or replacing a nose-pad, it gives me a few minutes of... peace. Serenity. I like, as well, going back to the person with their glasses, newly in one piece again, and telling them that "they'll last a few more battles if they have to". I like it when they offer to pay and I halfheartedly put my palms towards them and tell them not to bother, that it was "nothing major" or maybe to tell them to put a few coins in the next poor box they see. People who don't offer to pay for repairs I don't like. They get my mean squinty face as they turn to walk out (they don't ever see my mean, squinty face, but I'm guessing the back of their heads feel sore).

This repair was a little more difficult. This man's supra cord had snapped. Supra cord is what's used to secure lenses on what we call 'supra', or semi-rimmed, frames. If you've ever seen glasses or sunglasses with just a frame along the top of the lens, there's a very fine cord running along the lower edge of the lens too. It's kind of like fishing reel, invisible to the naked eye. 

Did you really need this picture? Fine, so let's zoom in on the cord.

You can't zoom in on the cord, I told you it's INVISIBLE.

If the cord is broke, and it can snap for a number of reasons, we usually rethread it, put in a new one altogether. I went back to the lab area of the shop and went looking for some replacement supra cord. I found about ten centimetres worth in a wee, see through, plastic bag and had the man's glasses fixed three or four minutes later. I handed them back to him, told him the try them on to make sure they still fitted nicely, pointed my palms at him as he offered to pay and advised him to buy a Big Issue next time someone offered him one (to balance out the Universe).

Back in the lab (I had to put the pliers back where I found them or Colin, who wasn't in that day, would hit me with the leg of a chair), I saw the wee bag the cord came in again. I picked it up and looked at it. I'd seen bags like this before. Lots of bags. But this one, hmm, this one looked useful. At the time, a wealth of uses came to mind.

Right now, I can only think of two. Firstly, I could store buttons in it. I imagined my nine spare buttons at home, from various suits and jackets, strewn across the bottom of my DIY/sewing/wires shoebox. This bag could bring order to the buttons. This wee bag could make my shoebox a better place to put things.

The second use, which I now realise isn't very useful, is for matchsticks. It's a resealable wee bag, matches would stay dry in it, I could go snorkling and light a cigar afterwards with no problems whatsoever. I now realise that, while I could indeed store matches in the wee bag, I'd have nothing to strike them against.

There were other uses at the time, I swear, but they all elude me right now. I took the wee bag. I put it in my wallet and there it stayed until today.

You want to see the wee bag, I know you do.

There you go. A wee, see through, resealable, plastic bag. There's ten million of them in the world today. But this one was going to be special, this one was going to make a difference.

Now, as I look at it, I can't find a use for it. I forgot that I threw out all my spare buttons (all nine) when I moved flat. I don't snorkel. I'm thinking of throwing the wee bag away.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you, and the rest of the internet, this is so that if I ever get ran over by a bus (or shot, if I'm in Dublin) and the police go looking for ID in my wallet and find a wee bag folded up in a credit card slot that at least ONE OF YOU can convince them that I wasn't a crystal meth addict and that I just had a soft spot for a wee bag.

No meth for me, thanks, I'm high on LIFE.