My Greatest Adventure

Can't Take My Eyes Off You

"Pardon the way that I stare
There's nothing else to compare
The sight of you leaves me weak
There are no words left to speak
But if you feel like I feel
Please let me know that it's real
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off you..."

_____________

"All right, all right, stop! I'll go!"

Three weeks. Three weeks of relentless nagging, day in and day out, with barely any relief. An offhand comment here, a lecture there – if there is one thing to be said about Helen Parr, it's that she is nothing if not persistent.

"Here," the woman in question snips with a scowl, hastily scooping up the phone from the nightstand and shoving the entire apparatus into her husband's unsuspecting arms. "You'd better make an appointment right now before it gets booked up."

Bob Parr resists the temptation to sigh in response. He is well aware that he's pushed his wife's frustration to its furthest limit with his repeated refusals to visit the eye doctor, and anyone with half a brain would know not to provoke her wrath any further.

Even though he really, really doesn't want to go.

They'll probably end up giving him glasses. He hates glasses.

Not that glasses are bad, mind you - Bob certainly doesn't think they are. Glasses are all well and good if you truly need them. But he doesn't need them. So what if he has to squint a little while reading the daily news? It's not like he's going blind or anything.

It's not just the newspaper, Bob! Remember when we were ordering takeout and you could barely read the menu and you had to keep asking Vi to tell you what the options were? Or when you were reading Jack-Jack a bedtime story and had to hold the book half an inch away from your face?

It wasn't half an inch, Bob grumbles inwardly as he reluctantly punches the numbers into the phone's keypad. Lord knows he loves his wife, but honestly she can be a bit much sometimes.

Still, he's learned his lesson from everything that has transpired over the past few months. Now, when Helen Parr insists, Bob Parr obeys.

Most of the time.

____________

Helen twists her wrist to glance once again at the time. It's been about twenty minutes since Bob disappeared into one of the examination rooms; he's sure to be finished any moment now. She shakes her head, remembering her husband's frequent and adamant protests against needing this appointment in the first place. He could be so pigheaded sometimes. She flips a page of the magazine she's reading, once again silently thanking Lucius and Honey for offering to take the kids for the day, giving her and Bob a much-needed break given the stress of recent events. It's enough trouble dealing with three actual children throwing fits over various non-issues without adding her husband to the mix. Honestly, what was the matter with wearing glasses anyway? And merely reading glasses at that? It isn't as if you'll be wearing them all the time, she told him time and time again. But he wouldn't be Bob Parr if he didn't manage to spend every opportunity he could whining about it anyway.

What a big baby, she muses, flipping another page. Still, she ends up chuckling quietly in spite of herself.

Helen's thoughts are interrupted by a sudden creaking sound, and she peers upward to see Bob emerging from the doorway, following the doctor – a Dr....Kent, was it? – back into the waiting room. Her husband's handsome face is contorted into something like a childish pout, and she can only assume this means one thing.