Judge, Jury, Trial? Phooey to All That

A friend once forgot to wear glasses during his drive to work. For some people, this might not have been a major problem—but this friend very much required optical assistance. Also, his morning commute involved a peak-hour crossing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

He made it to the office by combining proximity estimates of the blurry vehicle-shaped objects around him with judicious responses to frequent car horn blasts. Although he claimed to have completed the journey easily, Ken notably took a taxi home that evening.

At least his optically deprived drive-by-sound effort wasn’t filmed. Then-England cricket captain Bob Willis’s most forgetful moment, in the First Test at Edgbaston in 1982, was broadcast around the world. Even now, four decades later, a two-year-old YouTube video of the incident has scored nearly 90,000 views.

Walking out of the dressing room to resume his innings after a break, Willis made it about halfway to the pitch before he realised he’d forgotten a…