Off the Top of My Head

     We use the expression "just off the top of my head" as a disclaimer that we haven't put much thought into what is about to come out of our mouths.  I should probably use that expression much more often because 99 plus percent of what I say is spontaneous as is way too much of what I write.  But in my case what is off the top of my head is my glasses.  I'm sure  people wonder why I keep them there.  The reason is very simple, I have never once misplaced the top of my head.  Wearing glasses is a relatively new experience for me.  I didn't need glasses until my forties when I began to need weak ones for reading.  I bought them at the Dollar Store.  The one dollar price allowed me to buy many pairs, which I scattered throughout the rooms of the house in which I might reasonably need to read something.  I kept a pair in my purse, bedroom, living room, computer room and eventually added a pair to the laundry room for reading clothing labels.  This system worked pretty well even as I required progressively stronger magnification, but there were still times the glasses I needed weren't handy, so I began tucking them through the collar of my shirt, hanging them from a cord around my neck and eventually perched on the top of my head.  Though mothers are reputed to have eyes in the back of their head, no one claims to have them on the top, so that probably looked a little weird, but it worked.  I increasingly relied on glasses for close up viewing and they were handy as long as I had the top of my head with me.
     I just had to be careful to avoid "stacking", winding up wearing a pair with a forgotten pair perched on the top of my head.  That problem largely disappeared last year when I got my first pair of prescription glasses.  My eyes didn't suddenly get worse, it's just that for the first time in 30 years we had vision coverage and I could get glasses for less than $50.  Bifocals naturally.  I was hoping I could just leave them on all the time, but my distance vision is still good and the slight distortion of the bifocal line bothers me, so I take them off when I walk outside or go down the stairs. My theory is, since the purpose of glasses is to help me see better, when they make it harder for me to see clearly I take them off. So you will find my prescription glasses still frequently perched on top of my head but still unlikely to get sat on or lost.  I think scalp specs may be the next big fashion trend, but that's just off the top of my head.