I am trying to type this with two chopsticks so that I can sit an extra foot away from my computer and still see the letters clearly. When they start once again to blur, I will move on to drum sticks, and then perhaps to fireplace pokers or retractable orchestral conducting batons, so determined am I not to wear the magnifying reading classes I obviously need. I will do this until whichever digit-elongating instrument I must use becomes too hard to control and my posts turn out like an 8-month-old is banging on the keyboard with her tiny fists. For whatever reason, I cannot figure out how to make the type bigger in the blog program than I use, and this seems easier than having to face yet another tech learning curve.
I did buy the reading glasses. I’m good at buying things, and in my rational moments I recognize that all that’s happening is my lenses, like everything else on my body, is losing elasticity; a slightly convex lens, like that on reading glasses, allows the light to focus where it should, on my retina, instead of behind it, resulting in clear vision. No big deal, right?
Wrong. Freakin’ reading glasses! What’s next? Reading glasses on a chain, because I’m getting so dotty I keep leaving them places–which I know I would? Then what? Reading glasses on a beaded chain? Then reading glasses on a beaded chain just in case, but worn on the end of my nose all the time, because even when they’re around my neck I have a few moments of panic when I forget that they’re there?
Once you have reading glasses on a beaded chain that you wear on your face all the time anyway, you’re practically obligated to dress in loose linen Maoist wide-leg pants and smock tops, and move to an Ashram near Woodstock.
Nah-ah. Not there yet. Not as long as there are chopsticks with which to type and then drumsticks and long, retractable pointers.
I know this doesn’t make sense. My skin has been losing elasticity for awhile and I’m not embarrassed to try various creams to help bring back the spring, not that they work wildly well. My boobs, well, you know, what with gravity and all, they’re not exactly living the high life, so I wear a bra, and wouldn’t dream of hiding the fact.
I’m sure I’ll come around to the reading glasses, too. I like to read. What can I tell you? It would be a shame to be limited to billboards out of car windows. But I will not wear a beaded chain to keep my reading glasses at the ready. If anyone sees me doing this, I hereby authorize an intervention.
May 16, 2009 at 4:03 pm
hey – the computer age is speeding this up.
tell the girls to be ophthalmologists, steady work fir the years ahead
May 16, 2009 at 9:05 pm
After a lifetime of being Mr. Magoo-like in my near-sightedness…to suddenly have to hold things at arm’s distance to read them? While still being so nearsighted I need regular glasses for everythign else? WTF?? Thus far, this is the part of aging I hate most. But I’m sure that’s soon to be replaced by many more heinous aspects of becoming nearer my God to thee….
May 16, 2009 at 11:19 pm
We’re the same age and at the same point. I’m waiting for my insurance to get the effing glasses. Never needed glasses before in my life. It sucks!
May 18, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I am in the same boat. although I caved and bought three pairs of magnifying glasses–put one in my purse, one near my bed and one–um, I forget where. No chains, beaded or otherwise, yet.
It sucks, I know. I’ve always had perfect vision and it’s just so demoralizing to have to hold a menu six feet from your face, plus then there’s the light issue (no, I can no longer read a menu with nothing but one votive candle for illumination!)
I kind of want real glasses because I figure they obscure the bags and wrinkles a little….
And, um, Steph, I hope you don’t hate me for this, but I’m pretty sure you wrote classes for glasses somewhere in your post–unless it’s my crappy eyesight that’s responsible.