Oh, my aching eyes.

     We all get older, and contrary to the postings on my activities each weekend, I am no exception.  Acting immature does, in no way, protect you from the ailments of aging.  This blog speaks to my ever increasing need for vision enhancement.

     You've probably seen me at some point with my dollar store glasses perched on my nose, scanning a bar bill or a menu in a darkly lit restaurant.  I've needed them for about 10 years now and it seems like I am needing them now, more frequently.  It started innocently enough, reading the paper in bed at 10 o'clock at night and the type was starting to get blurry.  At my wife's urging (she was tired of, "what's that word, Honey?"), I went to see the eye doctor, the real kind, not the fake kind.

I don't know which is which but apparently there is a big difference between a "metrist" and a "mologist".  I went to the latter, but wouldn't let him put me under cuz of the bad incident I had with the ophthalmolestagist years before, the candy in the waiting room should have been a dead giveaway, but I digress....  After a battery of tests I was given an eyeglass prescription and several hours later I exited with my pair of $300 eyeglasses.  A week later, after wearing them for that long, I noticed, in bed, that the letters on the page of the paper were still blurry, but I will say the right side was equally blurry with the left side now.  The next day I bought my first pair of "cheaters" for $10 with a 1.0 magnification and put them on my nightstand, permanently replacing the expensive prescription pair that didn't work.   This allowed me, once again, to read all the news at 10 o'clock, that I had already read on the Internet earlier in the day, and to find all the misspellings and mistakes in my local paper.  It's nice to have a routine.

     My cheaters worked really well for a while and their use was limited to my bedside, helping my fatigued eyes see the small print.  This was true right up until people at work started to send me things in 8 and 10 font.  I know that this will seem ironic coming from a guy who just filled a page talking about his need for glasses, but seriously, if you are at work, and you keep having to reduce the font so your thoughts will fit on a page.....say less.  We old folks will appreciate it more.

Chances are your boss has to put his or her glasses on just to read the damn memo, that you felt was so important, and turns out, it's probably not.  Computer fonts should start at 14, period.  So I had to start moving my cheaters from my desk to the bedside, and inevitably they'd be in the wrong spot when I went to reach for them.  My office is 100 feet from my house in the top floor of my garage, so this resulted in a lot of 10 o'clock trips, across my driveway, in my jammies, just so I could read the already discussed, redundant, shabby excuse for a local paper. That's when I found glasses at the dollar store and started to buy them in bulk.

     I had moved up to a 1.5 magnification by then, funny how that happens, and I started to buy them a dozen at a time.  If I forgot them on a trip or something it would cost me $20 at the airport or a drugstore to replace them with a more expensive, but not better, pair of cheaters.  Those broke just as easy as the dollar store ones did.  Speaking of traveling, I can tell you that one of my greatest pet peeves is that hotels feel the need to put their brand on the shampoo/conditioner/mouthwash/body lotion in larger letters than the words that tell me what is actually in the bottles. I already know I'm at the Hilton, but can you tell me what the hell is in this bottle?

My current theory on my bad vision. back off, and you'll see it...

I don't wear my cheaters in the shower, so I frequently accidentally rinse with body lotion instead of the conditioner.  If you ever get in an elevator with a guy whose hair smells minty, it's probably me on a morning I confuse the shampoo with the mouthwash.  At least I haven't tried gargling with the shampoo...yet. These hotels at least have large lit up buttons for the floor numbers on the elevators, so that hasn't been an issue.   I do sometimes wonder though, if I should start learning the braille symbols that are above the lit numbers for the day I run out of all possible magnification.  I haven't really discussed why I think I have bad eyesight, but my prevailing theory is genetics, but my Mother's theory was entirely different, or at least she thought so every time she told me I'd go blind, point is, now, I buy a lot of cheaters.

My shampoo at home

They are everywhere in my house, on my nightstand, in my valet box, on the kitchen counter, in a living room table, and even in every vehicle I own.  I don't keep them in the shower at home, but we buy bulk shampoo and conditioner, so there's enough room to fit both the brand and what's in it, on the label. Char misses my minty hair when I am home.  Dollar store glasses can't be beat for the price, but they aren't exactly known for their durable construction either.  The tips for the ears fall off easily, they scratch, the screws pop out, and especially, they bend.  I know to throw them out when I walk by a mirror and see them sitting lopsided on my face, though I do admit to owning an eyeglass repair kit too (which I got at the dollar store). 

     I'll have to stop opining about eyeglasses now, less I have to change the font so it will all fit on this page.  I'll close where I started, talking about dimly lit restaurants.  What I used to find romantic, I now find annoying.  There is nothing worse than being escorted to a dark corner of a restaurant, and then getting a menu typed in a small font.  If you ask sometimes they'll bring an extra candle to you, to help, but it rarely does.  Inevitably the darkness creates a lot more questions for the waitress like "What's your favorite dish here?" or "Say I wanted to order an appetizer and I liked meat...." or "can you repeat the 12 side dishes again for me?".  If I worked at this type of place I'd buy a miner's helmet, just for older, big tippers like me.  Would I wear it? See below for my next anticipated purchase, I wonder if I can trade a barely used $300 pair of eyeglasses for it?

They don't have these at the Dollar Store yet, but when they do.......