Please Don't Play Games With My Eyes

“It’s fun to play games with vision, but don’t play games with your eyes!”

— old public service commercial

One day, while I’m in the fourth grade, I am told that I need glasses.

For years I go to a local guy, Mr. Sacco, whom I can always count on — until he retires. Gradually most of the local opticians fade from view as the chain stores pretty much take over.

I go to one of them for a few years. It’s OK, but one day, two years ago, I decide to go elsewhere because I can’t seem to negotiate the store’s phone menu when I call for an appointment.

Someone I know recommends another place — a local store run by two guys.

One of them is there when I arrive without an appointment. He greets me cordially. As we discuss my prescription, it occurs to me that this place is like Mr. Sacco’s — I feel I’m being treated like a valued customer and not like grist for some corporate lens-grinding mill.

I tell him how nice it is that I have now found a local place that I can depend on for my eyewear.

A few days later, when I come to pick up my glasses, the guy’s partner takes care of me. He’s also pleasant, and as we chat he mentions his years of experience, including time spent working for one of the chains. Oh the stories I could tell you, he says.

I leave the store as a satisfied customer.

A couple of weeks later I’m riding a bus when it passes the opticians’ building.

I look out the window. I notice a sign.

The business has gone out of business. Thanks for your patronage, etc.

One year later I take a deep breath and go back to the chain store with my latest prescription. In addition to the basic lenses, for years I’ve been getting progressive bifocals.

They take me without an appointment, and a few days later someone hands me a case containing my new glasses. This seems odd; usually opticians have you try them on.

Fast-forward to a week and a half ago. I have my annual exam, but the doctor tells me that the glasses I’ve been wearing don’t have progressive bifocals. He assures me his prescription called for them.

He suggests that I go back to the store and tell them. Maybe I’ll get a refund or discount.

I go to the store and make my case. The guy asks me if I have last year’s prescription. I tell him the doctor said they should have it on file. I wind up having to tell him this twice.

He finds the prescription on his tablet. He points to something and seems to say that there’s a specification for progressive bifocals, but apparently (assuming I’m understanding him correctly) I was supposed to specifically ask for them.

I’ve never had to do that, I say. It’s always been this way, he says. Besides which, I had a hundred days to complain about my glasses and I didn’t, so no refund.

I also mention how the glasses were handed to me in a case, with no one offering to let me try them on.

“You always had that option,” he says. Somehow I’m in the last reel of “The Wizard of Oz,” where Glinda tells Dorothy she could have gone home any time she wanted to do so. (Even as a kid seeing the movie for the first time, I wanted to punch Glinda. Didn’t you?)

So I schedule an appointment with another local place, which I had avoided because I heard it’s pricey. But at least it’s not a chain.

Turns out it’s run by a guy who seems to do the things Mr. Sacco used to do, and even more. He takes measurements, glances at my face from several angles and charges a price I think I can afford. (I do have a couple of tax refunds coming.)

He has been in business for 25 years, and he says he’s not going anywhere soon. He says he’ll call me in a couple of weeks.

We’ll see.

Two Women Named Barbara: Part Two

I don’t remember where I first heard of Barbara Lakey (better known as “Babs”) or Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine (better known as “FMAM”), which she founded and published.

I do remember that I had written a mystery story and I was looking for a place to send it.

You have to be careful when you’re marketing your work. Not every publisher is honest; there’s a reason there’s a website called Writer Beware.

But as I read about Futures, I saw a name I recognized: Henry Slesar, who was one of FMAM’s advisers, had written stories for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; had adapted some of those stories for Hitchcock’s TV show; and had served as the head writer for a daytime soap, “The Edge of Night,” for many years. And on the side he ran his own ad agency.

So I figured I could trust Babs Lakey, even if she could have chosen a better name for her magazine. She meant “futures” in the sense of investments, like gold futures; she felt she was investing in new writers. Unfortunately, after I began selling stuff to Futures, some people I know thought I was a science fiction writer. Oh well.

Not long after I found out about Futures, Mr. Slesar died and Babs launched a short story contest in his memory. I entered it, won third place, and had the option of submitting it to the magazine, which I did.

The fiction editor surprised me by rejecting it, so I wrote to Babs.

“Why don’t you email a copy of this story, would you?” she wrote back. “I always enjoy seeing what we turn down.” So I did.

I also submitted another story, based on my experiences as a newspaper copy editor. By this time there was a new fiction editor, “an old newshen” who said she really liked the story, which was about 8,000 words, but could I cut it to 5,000 to 6,000?

Gulp. Then again, I had sometimes slashed the hell out of reporters’ stories, and those who live by the delete key must die by the delete key. And of course the shortened story was much better.

But after a few months went by with no word from the new fiction editor, I wrote to Babs. Turns out that the new editor had left and there was still another fiction editor. Because of a problem with the file system, he had only the original version and liked it but wished it were shorter. So I told Babs about the shorter version, she told me to send it, and he immediately accepted it.

And within a few hours I received word that the story from the contest had been accepted for the magazine. Babs even put my name on the cover of that issue.

Two sales in one night! (I also remember that this was the same night that Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. I was at least as happy as he was.)

I wish I could say I sold many more stories to Futures, but it folded despite Babs’ tireless efforts. She lost a lot of money and, from what I’ve heard, her health. I’ve read that she is retired now, and I’m sorry to say that we’ve lost touch. I hope she is doing OK.

And I’ve always kept the note she sent me about my newspaper story, “An Eye for Detail,” which is probably my best mystery so far:

“Just did the layout for your story and wanted to tell you what a GREAT one!! FABulous job, Mark!!

babs”

Could anybody ever ask for a better editor?

Two Women Named Barbara: Part One

I owe a lot to two women named Barbara.

First there was Barbara Clarkson, a published poet who taught creative writing at my alma mater.

Her creative writing course was open only to juniors and seniors, but I used to see her around the campus before I ever took it. On the surface she seemed friendly and pleasantly eccentric.

When I finally got into her class — I think I was a senior — I found out she was indeed friendly and pleasantly eccentric. But when she handed my stories back I learned that she was also a friendly, pleasantly eccentric and damned hard-nosed editor. If she saw a word that she thought didn’t belong, or was redundant, she’d circle it.

She circled a lot of my words — so many that as I think of it now, I’m surprised I ever became an editor. I’m sure that she herself would have been a godsend to the copy desk at the paper where I eventually worked.

But she did like my work. When the college’s annual literary magazine came out, she saw to it that the issue began with one of my stories.

As my graduation approached, Ms. Clarkson wanted me to get the college’s commencement award for writing,

The head of the English department wanted somebody else to get it. The college had recently added a minor in communications, and the department head, apparently in an attempt to promote this new focus, wanted the award to go to the editor of the college paper.

I could see the department head’s point. I knew the editor. I had even worked for him on the paper; he was a good guy, and he had led the paper during a time of controversy on the campus, and the stories he wrote about the controversy were about as professional as you could get at a school that didn’t have a journalism department. Not surprisingly, he is now the president of a corporate communications company.

But Ms. Clarkson pushed for me, to the point where the department named two recipients: the editor and me. As much as I still appreciate this, I remember Ms. Clarkson more as the person who let me know, without ever explicitly saying it, that I was indeed a writer, that the career choice I had made in the late 1960s was not a stupid one.

I wish I could say I kept in touch with her through the years, but several months after my graduation I began a 30-year stint at the local paper, and that, among other things, kept me busy.

One New Year’s Day, she died. She hadn’t been sick; the way I heard it, she was here one moment, gone the next. Someone else who knew her told me it was the perfect way for her to go.

Before she died, I did have one more, quite unexpected encounter with her.

A colleague of mine had become an adjunct instructor at the college. One night at the paper, when he wasn’t there, the phone rang.

“Is Dan Valenti there?” I knew the voice immediately.

I explained that Dan wasn’t there, then hesitantly asked her if she was Ms. Clarkson.

“Yes! Who’s this?”

Filled with pride at being a successful (so far) alumnus, I told her.

“Mark! What are YOU doing there?”

I still laugh at this, while remembering how I sometimes asked myself various versions of the same question over those 30 years.

Next time: The Second Barbara.