Reading Glasses Should Be Cool!
Just because I am fifty…something, doesn’t mean that I want to look like grandma from the fifties. Once I take off my apron and stop baking cookies for my friends with glaucoma, I want to look sveldt in my reading glasses.
Then I’ll put some clothes on.
I’m sure this image will help you all stick to your diets!
See; I’m always thinking about you.
I have only begun to wear reading glasses this year. I just can’t see the tiny print on small bottles. Being in food service, I can’t not know what ingredients are in the dishes that I am making.
As I have mentioned before, I work in the Toronto film industry. Once a certain continuity lady on set asked me whether the brown rice and a million vegetables and cashews and cheddar cheese risotto had any red peppers in it. “Why, no,” said I. “Great”, she said, “because I break out in hives and then my throat closes down and I have to be rushed to the hospital.”
I take the finished dish out to the crew craft table amid the myriad of condiments that have been placed there at an earlier time. I return to the truck, but I keep getting a nagging feeling that all is not well in risotto land, so I go back on set to check things out.
Here is the continuity lady sprinkling some pale red spicy-looking stuff on her risotto. I grab the container after she has finished and run to find enough light to read the ingredients, begging her not to taste another morsel until I get back with the verdict.
I cannot read the infinitismally small writing and need to find someone who can.
That was no-one.
The type-face was so small that we had to find a guy with coke-bottle lenses and borrow them. Does Emily listen and stop mowing down risotto a la hives?
No.
Is the container full of dried red pepper, and only dried red pepper?
Oh, yes it is.
Do I tell her this and advise that she stops eating it immediatement and get ready for a free trip to the nearest hospital?
Yes, I do.
Does she listen?
No.
I was going to say “of course not,” but the answer really isn’t “of course not”. If you were deathly allergic to red pepper, and you accidentally ate a ton of it because it didn’t look like any rep pepper product that you had ever seen before, don’t you think that you would stop eating it, freak out in circles and grab the nearest person by the throat and demand to be taken to the hospital for a shot of some epinephrine or whatever because you were so stupid that you didn’t carry an epi-pen with you? I think the odds are quite high that you would.
This woman ate another entire bowl of red pepper-laced risotto.
“Was that wise?’ I asked, cooly, but incredulously. “It’s delicious! I’m sure I’ll be alright!”
There are times when “delicious” and “alright” are not copacetic. Usually when one has a deadly allergy to something yummy. One does not usually eat something that one does not find delicious. Hence the danger of delicious-tasting deadly food.
We were filming and the room was velvet black. I left under this cover of darkness, retreating to my truck in order to regroup my thoughts — and my nerves. Any moment now, that stubborn woman would require medical attention, clutching at her throat and pointing wildly with her other hand at the culprit risotto on the table. “Red pepper”, she would gasp with her last breath. Every one would remember that I had come running in and dashed off with Mr. Dash, or something just as suspicious. I had come back in with the same bottle and replaced it on the table. Then Emily had helped herself to more of this substance and poured it all over her risotto, as I had watched from the corner with terrified eyes. “Pat poisoned the spice bottle!” they would say. “Emily was alright after the first bowl, but the second one killed her!”
They are film people, after all.
An obvious allergy and a person too stupid to not eat it or read a label before dowsing their food with their own personal death-bringer, would be the last thing to cross their minds. It is easier to blame craft service.
If the soup on the stove is hot, and they help themselves and drink it, they still blame us because it wasn’t at perfect drinking temperature.”Hey! This soup is too hot!” And the porridge. You guessed it. “Hey! This porridge is too cold! That’s because it is lunchtime Goldilocks and I’m using it as an ingredient in a cranberry oatmeal loaf for this evening.
No matter. Daggers shoot from everyone’s eyes at a craft person if something is not right on set.
“Hey! This light isn’t working! That’s because the craft person must have tripped and tugged it out of the wall.”
“Hey! This dress doesn’t fit the actress anymore! That’s because she ate too much food from craft service. I told them not to feed her, no matter how much she cries.”
“Hey, that guy just pushed all the shades off the edge of the truck! That’s because the craft person didn’t tell him the gate platform wasn’t down.”
“Hey! My stash is missing!”
That’s because this craft person gave it to the director, so he could function and get this shit-hole of a movie finished.
Kidding.
On the last part.
No-one takes personal responsibility on set if there is someone else to blame for their own mistakes.
Just remember; it wasn’t Craft Service, it was Locations.
As for Emily- which isn’t her real name; I had already informed a production assistant along route that someone was about to need medical assistance due to a previously unannounced food allergy. I had already ordered some allergy medication be sent to set. Short of dragging her out of her chair by her hair, there really wasn’t much more that I could do.
It has been my experience over the last ten years working in Craft, that film people also lie. A lot. Let’s be nice and call it “taking creative licence.”
Emily did get hives, but the antihistamine worked like a charm. Had she been as allergic as she had said that she was, it would not have made a dent. She had eaten enough red pepper powder to kill a horse — with allergies of course.
She had not read the label, and neither had I. No-one could. So I have bought reading glasses so that I can read very tiny script.
Emily should too.
My reading glasses are okay, but I am on the search for fun and funky.
I’m checking out many sites to see what is out there in the online community. I’ll post my results tomorrow. If anyone has great suggestions with regard to this search for quality products at great prices, please let me know!
I’ll give your suggestions a go.
Pat
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