My eyes have been opened to new truths recently.
I have discovered why people hold pieces of paper at arm’s length when they’re trying to read.
I have learned why people put their glasses on the end of their noses and peer out over them.
These are frightening discoveries, because they mean that I am now one of them.
I have been what some might call blind as a bat since I was a young teenager. Theone positive thing I clung to, however, was that I could see perfectly anything within about nine inches of my eyes.
Until now. Actually, I still have that small window of perfect vision, except when I am wearing my new contacts, which is all of my waking hours.
I had worn contacts for many years until about three years ago. I started having trouble reading music when I sat at the piano, and my contacts were feeling uncomfortable. I was starting a new job and decided I should get a more fashionable, updated set of glasses to use as a backup to my contacts, so I went to the eye doctor.
I had told the person at the front desk that I was there for an eyeglass appointment, not a contact appointment, because I thought all I needed were some new glasses. I picked out a new pair, but when the doctor found out how long I had been wearing my contacts – about 11 years – he was horrified and told me to go home and throw them away immediately.
Suddenly I was wearing only glasses. I was so busy at my new job that I didn’t really have time to go to Duluth to get new contacts. I noticed that if I needed to read something small and close up, I would have to take my glasses off to see clearly. It wasn’t too bad a problem.
This summer I launched full-fledged into a mid-life crisis as I prepared for my high school 30-year reunion. I went back to the eye doctor to get contacts. The doctor wasn’t sure what would work best for me, so he started me with a set of contacts that allowed my right eye to see distances and my left eye to see in between distances and that close up area where I have perfect vision.
That didn’t work too well for me, because I felt like I was going around half blind all the time.
I turned down the option of contacts that each had bifocals in them, because the doctor said I wouldn’t be able to see anything as clearly. I really value seeing clearly.
So now I am wearing contacts that only correct my distance vision. For that in-between place, I bought a pair of $15 over-the-counter reading glasses, which sort of work, although half of the time I don’t bother with them because they don’t get me to perfect vision anyway.
Thefrustrating thing is that now, whenever I’m wearing my contacts, I can’t see anything in that nine-inch space of perfection I have always enjoyed as a consolation for being so blind otherwise.
In the meanwhile, I am fighting middle age for all I’m worth with a rigorous exercise regimen that seems to be working quite well for me. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
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