"I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out"

Steven Wright’s signature brand of humor thrives on ambiguity, absurdity, and the subtle bending of logical expectations. The line, “I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out,” delivers a jolt of comedy by conflating two distinct meanings of “prescription.” Generally, a “prescription” refers to a doctor’s authorization to wear corrective lenses. It is also understood in the context of time-limited medication, which can “run out” if not renewed. Wright’s joke cleverly merges these interpretations.

Upon first hearing, the image conjured by the words suggests a person whose glasses suddenly stop functioning, almost as if, like a cell phone or a bus ticket, their efficacy is dependent on an up-to-date prescription that can “expire.” This abrupt and physical manifestation of expiration for an inanimate object is absurd, turning the mundane activity of walking down the street into a moment of surreal confusion.

Wright’s humor draws from the literalization of a phrase commonly used in everyday conversation. No real change takes place the instant a prescription reaches its expiration date; glasses do not lose their power at midnight. Yet, the mental image of vision suddenly blurring as an invisible timer ticks out is both ludicrous and oddly relatable, highlighting the nonsensical way we sometimes treat mechanisms and rules, an example of humans anthropomorphizing paperwork and regulations.

This linguistic twist exposes the flexibility and occasional slipperiness of language. By choosing a word with more than one connotation and pushing it into an unfamiliar context, Wright invites his audience to scrutinize the figural language embedded in daily communication. The humor stems not only from surprise, but from the recognition that logic, when taken too literally, undermines itself and veers into the nonsense. This gives the line an understated philosophical depth, poking fun both at bureaucracy and at how easily meaning can shift, deflate, or double upon closer inspection.