Eulogy to my Miniscope

By Steff  Green of Steff Metal and Grymm & Epic

It is with great sadness that I lay my monocular miniscope to rest. A faithful friend for nearly ten years, my monocular finally succumbed to that most fatal of catastrophes – dropped in the mud at a German heavy metal festival.

O Monocular, o wondrous device of seeing! How you brightened the life of this wretched soul, this small girl blighted with the vision of a particularly poorly sighted mole.

I remember how I praised my “legally-blind” status, which brought you into my life for a drastically BUY NOW price. How I lovingly removed you from your pleather case and twisted you into the optimum zoom for the first time.

How you stayed by my side these long years, improving my long-distance vision and bringing restaurant menus and cute boys finally within my sight.

What a team we made! Me with my schoolbooks and my dreams of being the world’s first color-blind archaeologist, and You with your shiny finish and unscratched lens so full of promise. Your mechanism smooth, your measurements not yet scratched with use.

I recall our first years together at high school, where you signaled me out as a “weirdo” – at once fascinating and a freak. You earned me the nickname “birdwatcher” and “the pirate”. Thanks for that.

You helped me finish all my notes in History class, so the boy who sat next to me (who I had a huge crush on) could copy them.

Once, he even asked if he could look through you, and when I passed you to him, our fingers brushed. Thanks for that.

After high school, I moved seven hours from my hometown, to a tiny room on the seventh floor of a university hostel, and you moved with me. Together, we sat at the window and watched the city evolve.

You enabled me to spy on the cute boy in the front row of my archaeology lecture.

You gave me access to takeaway shop menus, bus timetables, and the beer selection down at the pub.

I took you to the beach. Not my brightest idea. I’m sorry for dropping you in the sand, but at least your new “gritty” texture gave you a certain personality.

I’m also sorry for dropping you at that party, and not picking you up before drunken guy stood on you. And then he threw you in my beer and I had to fish you out.

But most of all, I’m sorry for dropping you off the roof while we were watching the fireworks. Good thing that garden gnome broke your fall.

And even though you were filled with sand and smelled of beer and your had shards of garden gnome buried in your lens, and even though the cat chewed your rubber grip and you weren’t Bluetooth compatible, I still loved you like the far-seeing eye I never had.

And now you’re gone, lost somewhere amongst the mud and carnage on the battlefield of a German heavy metal festival. We’d gone to see my favorite band (“They’re overrated,” you said, but you came anyway.) and a well-meaning German bumped me from behind, and you sailed away, landing with a sickening plop in a giant puddle of mud.

I tried to go after you, really I did. The crowd even parted so I could scramble through that mud puddle on my hands and knees. I found several beer bottles, a Swedish flag and someone’s right shoe, but no miniscope. The German apologized profusely (at least, I think he did), and offered to buy me another, but there is no replacing you.

I made him buy me a beer, instead.

My fondest wish is that, even though you’re buried on foreign soil, that one day we’ll meet again in the great heavy metal festival in the sky. Girl and Monocular, reunited, once more the scourge of cute boys and restaurant menus everywhere.

Rest in Peace (hopefully not in pieces, but those Germans were wearing awfully heavy boots).

Love, Steff