Sight for sore eyes

Aging means creaky joints, trouble sleeping, and not eating fried onion rings anymore – where does it end? The worst of it is aging eyes. Yesterday I got my old eyes back. And it only took three pairs of glasses to do it.

Once upon a time I had 20/15 vision. Yep, my vision had to get worse just to become normal. As I got older my eyes did become normal for a while, meaning they got worse. Then they slid right on past into bad.

For the past few years I’ve had two pairs of glasses. My “walking” glasses are bifocals that allow me to walk, drive, and work in the shop in crystal clarity. The reading portion of those glasses allows me to read labels, tape measures and the like without hindrance; I just tilt my head back a bit to look through the bottom portion of the lenses.

However, I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer. Bifocals are awful for this, as you spend your entire time with your head tilted back just to read the screen. Fine if you have the cervical vertebrae of an owl; not so good if you’re human. So for straight reading and computing tasks I’ve had a second pair of “sitting” (reading-only) glasses for years.

This worked fine till I lost my sitting glasses last week, and that’s when I discovered that those glasses worked for the computer because they were at least five prescriptions too old. The new pair of readers I got has my current reading prescription in them. They’re great for reading a book held in your hands, and I quickly fell in love with them – books haven’t been that clear in years! Unfortunately, they require that I get about 15” from my computer screen to see it.

My eye doctor said he’d redo those readers to my typical computer distance, but as I was being fitted for the replacement lenses they suggested I consider a third pair. That way I could keep the other new ones for book/magazine reading, and use these exclusively for the computer. I got the cheapest frames they had for that third pair and I am one happy guy because those computer glasses give me a workshop bonus. Turned out my preferred distance for viewing a computer screen is the same as for close work in the shop. Typically I always wore the bifocals in the shop and did OK, but having the option for increased magnification with this third pair is fantastic.

Best of all, since they approximate my eyes from about six years ago, I can pretend I’m younger.

Till next time,

A.J.