Autumn is in 7th grade and 12 years old. That means she is playing school sports. She’s on the basketball team and Mondays finds me sitting in the bleachers cheering her on. Wednesdays find me sitting in class while the rest of my family are in bleachers somewhere cheering her on.

On Monday, just before the bus arrived, Autumn was adjusting her glasses (they always get bent out of shape) and they broke in half. Useless. Right where the nose piece meets the eye thing. So she went to school blind. Or at least squinty.

Her dad took the glasses to be repaired. He was shocked when the lady looking at them said, "so the first solder job didn’t work?" Steve replied, "They’ve never been fixed before." The lady gave him a hard look that translated means, "you poor clueless man."

Turns out, the glasses had been repaired before but Autumn’s parents had no clue (yes that includes me). So how did a 12-year-old get her glasses fixed without telling her parents? Have you met my mother-in-law?

Grandma Sherwood to the rescue, it seems. I was not happy about that, by the way. On one hand it is nice that Autumn has someone she feels comfortable disclosing things to. On the other hand, I do not like the idea that she conspired with her grandma to hide something from us.

Autumn was afraid we’d blow up. My reaction Monday when Autumn broke her glasses for what I thought was the first time, "It’s OK. It happens." Yeah, sounds like blowing up to me. She didn’t get beat, grounded, or anything. Even after we found out about the grandma thing, and did I mention I was not happy about that? (I didn’t even say anything to Grandma, and that was probably a good thing.)

We were able to buy her a new frame and the lenses she had were filed down to fit them. It’s been a year since her last eye exam, so last night she had her new exam. Her eyes haven’t changed that much.

The big news is the exam was a contacts exam. She has her first set of contacts, which we think she’ll be more likely to wear than sports glasses when participating in sports. (It’s hard to throw off the catcher helmet with glasses on in order to catch that pop fly.)

My baby has contacts. It probably killed her to have to wear her glasses to school today. Grandma would have let her…

Thanks for playing.