I took my 9 year old daughter to get new glasses. Being a kid she wasn’t at all interested in their shape, but rather how sparkly or colorful some were. Being very fashion conscientious myself, I couldn’t let her leave the store with glasses that looked horrible on her simply because they were sparkly.

You have to understand, when I was a kid my parents allowed me to dress (what I consider now) to be very geeky, very drab, and altogether unappealing. I wasn’t in rags mind you. There was nothing wrong with my clothes so much as there was something missing from my own experience and ability to look decent. Giant lenses on my glasses, hair flat and parted, tshirts sporting odd and unrelated themes or catchphrases, baggy jeans.

I had found a pair that complimented her face perfectly. They were a dark red. She tried them on and thought nothing of them. I insisted she pay more attention to them but they simply didn’t appeal to child-like sensibilities. I needed to change her perspective on this pair and appeal to her own personal mythology. Then it struck me.

They weren’t just red glasses. They were ruby red glasses. I quickly searched for images on my phone of rubies and showed them to her.

“Oh, I love rubies!”

Mission accomplished. Personal mythology in practical, every-day use.