Screwing With Hillbilly Mom

I have a screw loose. I know. I don't mean to brag. But in addition to my total insouciance towards all things socially unacceptable, I have an actual loose screw. In the literal, hardware sense.

The right earpiece screw of my glasses is loose, so that earpiece flaps back and forth as I take them off and put them on. It is but one more thing to annoy me during the school day.

Today, by some mystical alignment of the sun, moon, earth, and universe, I found myself uncharacteristically idle for about 10 minutes while my class was hard at work. Like a chimpanzee jonesin' for termites, I searched for an implement with which to tighten my loose screw. A dime was too large, my fingernails were too soft, but a single staple was just right.

Did you ever try to separate one staple from a long line of staples suitable for stapler insertion? Note to self: it ain't gonna happen. Those little boogers are glued together tighter than headlice nits on a kindergarten beauty pageant contestant. I soon deduced that shooting a lone staple out of my Swingline was the most efficient route.

Silently chortling, so as not to disturb my industrious students (there's a test tomorrow, by cracky!), I prepared to insert one leg of the staple into the slot of the screw. Except that my glasses are bifocals. Not that I need them, of course. It's just that all fashionable ladies of a certain age like to have such stylin' accessories. That fashionable crap ain't all it's cracked up to be. Having spoiled my peepers with those demon bifocals, I could not see the screw slot without my glasses. But when I put on the glasses, I couldn't see the screw slot! Woe was moi.

I took off the bifocals and read that screw like a Braille madwoman. The staple leg caught in the screw slot, and it turned a half-turn! Then I tried to remove it to change the angle and make another half-turn. But that staple was stuck in the screw. Double woe was moi. After much prying, the staple came out. Upon putting those bifocals back on my face, I saw that the staple was bent worse that an S-curve sign with scoliosis.

I really need to hoof it over to The Devil's Playground and invest in a magnifying glass and a little screwdriver.