An Emotional Drain - or - I didn't see that coming

One summer day as I was playing outside, I spotted the town DPW crew using a strange rig to clean out the storm drains along the road. Now storm drains already held a fascination and we could happily idle the hours away dropping sand, stones, sticks, leaves, whatever into the water below – or if they had dried out, we would put gum on the end of a stick and try to retrieve coins or other cool prizes out of them. I’m sure we did our share to cause the town to need to clean them out. So, up Phillips Street they came – odd bucket, upside-down, hinged, jawed and toothed hanging from a cable from a boom-arm off the back of a big truck. I climbed the maple tree that hung over the north driveway and the next drain they would clean. I had a perfect view looking almost straight down into the hole as they removed the heavy metal grate and scooped away. The workers knew they had an audience overhead and chatted with me as they worked. As they were almost done I decided to climb down, but as I turned my head a small branch hooked my glasses and they tumbled down, bounced in the dirt at the edge of the road, and disappeared down into the not-yet-covered pool below. The workers scurried to try to locate the glasses, now vanished under the muddy stirred up mess to no avail. I was filled with anguish, knowing that losing glasses would be no small issue and an expense too large for me to comprehend. With nothing more to do here, the work crew moved onward and Mom soon arrived home to find me wandering anxiously around the front yard. She looked at me wondering what was different about me (you know that feeling when someone has shaved off their moustache but you can’t figure it out) and why I was so nervous. I assumed that she must have been very distressed, but thankfully she didn’t really scold me. She found my previous pair of glasses – frame broken and taped back together – and I wore them until we could get them replaced (evidently for the second time).