Graduated

Headed off to the eye doctor the other day to get what I "thought" was just your run o' the mill vision check.

You know the drill, you put on your existing reading glasses and puruse the handy-dandy-can-you-read-this card. You gaze across the room at the random lines of letters getting progressively smaller in a triangular shape. You have little puffs of air blown at your eyes to make sure you aren't getting glaucoma or cataracts or whatever it is that the little puffs of air help to identify. You stand up thank the doctor and make an appointment for next year. Except for...

This year I put on my existing reading glasses and still had to move the handy-dandy-can-you-read-this card to arms length to read the smallest lines. Damn. I peered across the room to see the random lines of letters and realized that those bottom two lines were mainly illegible. Double Damn. Luckily, the little puffs of air still didn't show anything since I am not scheduled to have the cataracts removed from my eyes. I guess I will save that "fail" for a subsequent year.

Based on my AGING EYES (thank you Doctor Eye-Guy for just blurting that one out about three times in rapid succession and making me feel like I ought to scurry to the car and grab my walker) - I was given the option of TRI-FOCALS. Damn Daddy that was a punch in the gut. But, after listening to the selling points - small bands of focus areas that will cause you to bob your head up and down and up and down endlessly to finally find that sweet spot for being able to see what you are trying to see - I decided against.

Interestingly, it only occurs to me as I write this that perhaps some of the middle-to-upper aged folks I have heretofore secretly thought had Parkinson's were really just trying to see Something. Anything. Using their trifocals. All the bobbing and shaking and head adjustment was merely an effort to discover which small strip of their glasses they should be using to get clear focus on the mid-ground. Hmmm?

So, instead, I will have two pairs of glasses. One pair to wear around and drive with - still bi-focals since I can't read jack shit without them and it would be stupid to get glasses for which I would have to CONSTANTLY take off just to see what time it is. The other pair are the SERIOUS reading glasses. And yes, these are also bi-focals. Half for seeing the computer and half for reading a book. Glasses for those times when I am in my own home and don't really care to see across the room at the crap that the kids have left laying around. Just BIG pieces of glass that clarify and hone BIG hunks of paragraphs instead of single lines in focus.

And yet, am I prepared for the pain in the buttsky of trying to determine when I am going to need which pairs of glasses? Will I eventually resort to wearing not one - - but two - - of those old-lady beady chain things around my neck? I have avoided this in the past, but lately it's getting tiring looking for my glasses all over the whole darn house only to find them - - yup you guessed it, right on top of my head.

And last - what's with the new industry term for bi-focals - - Graduated Lenses? All I have to say about that is it's just a nice way of saying you've graduated to being blinder than you were a year before. And, does having two pairs of bi-focals mean that I actually have quad-focals? (I almost wrote four-focals - but then amended based on the bi and tri. Sheesh.)