Twinkies, eyeglasses and the zombie apocalypse

Where will I find new eyeglasses after the zombie apocalypse?

Hostess' bankruptcy put this terrifying thought in my head last week. I was trying to explain baby boomers' lamentations about the disappearance of Twinkies to my wife, who didn't grow up here. Bad baked goods made with totally artificial ingredients: what's the appeal?

I explained that in "Zombieland,"* Woody Harrelson wanted a Twinkie because it represented the society that was gone, and because they're filled with so many preservatives that they would last forever. Unless the survivors could find bread in a can in an unlooted country store, Twinkies would be their only taste of anything made from amber waves of grain.

Then my wife asked the question about the eyeglasses. It's a poser.

Life after the zombie apocalypse wouldn't go so well for me if I broke my glasses.

Bread for a post-zombie world

First, there's the danger that I would not see a lurking zombie torso on the ground, unable to raise itself because some prior living person had shot it in half, but still able to deliver a deadly bite.

Then, there's the opportunity cost. I might not see unspent ammo, lighters with butane in them, unopened bottles of 1961 Chateau Latour* -- all sorts of useful stuff.

* One reason to hope for a zombie apocalypse: Looting the wine cellars of the newly undead is the only way I'll ever drink Bordeaux first growths again.

But how to replace a broken pair of spectacles?

Even if I could go into a zombie-infested city to find an optician, they wouldn't have eyeglasses in my prescription sitting around. They might -- might -- have test lenses I could see through. But how would I get those lenses in frames? I'd have to try to build frames for them, perhaps with wire hangers. But how securely would those hold the lenses if I had to make a break through a zombie horde, simultaneously pivoting and swinging an axe?

What I'd have to do is take a replacement pair off of a zombie. That would mean bashing in the heads of an awful lot of bespectacled zombies and trying on a lot of crud-infested glasses. I suppose I would be used to the smell of rot by then, but still, that's putting it pretty close to the olfactory glands.

And then I realized -- after somebody dies, do they still wear eyeglasses? 

Were none of them nearsighted when they were alive?

Do zombies bother to correct nearsightedness? Or do they just stumble along, bumping into things and hoping one of those things is soft, warm, edible flesh?

Some people mourn Hostess going out of business for the Ding Dongs. I mourn because I now know my life after the zombie apocalypse will be mostly out of focus.

* Zombie movie wine pairings, including a Thanksgiving wine tip for the living.

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.