These two eyes don’t have it anymore
My annual visit to the optometrist is like my semiannual visits
to the dentist: both end up with me apologizing for not taking care
of myself like I should and promising to do better in the year to
come.
These two eyes don’t have it anymore
My annual visit to the optometrist is like my semiannual visits to the dentist: both end up with me apologizing for not taking care of myself like I should and promising to do better in the year to come.
This week I came prepared to my appointment, bringing both of the sets of reading glasses that I have been prescribed during the past two years so I could have the doctor remind me which ones I should be wearing. Two years past my 40th birthday, my eyes are beginning to betray me – particularly after long writing sessions in front of the computer.
I am slowly realizing that my life free of glasses will soon be a thing of the past; unless I can figure out how to stretch my arms even farther away from my face when I’m reading something.
As I am typing this I am not wearing my glasses. My vision is still good enough to keep the screen in focus at just the distance I sit away from the computer monitor. Any more declination of my sight and it’ll be glasses every day for me.
I should be happy that I made it more than 40 years without spectacles. My parents and my sister have been sporting them – or contacts – for years as I’ve enjoyed good eyesight. Like with other parts of my body, like knees and ankles, time has taken its toll and I must come to grips with that.
Sitting in the examination chair with my chin in some strange vision-measuring contraption, the eye doctor asked me to read the lowest line of letters that I could from the images on the wall in front of me. Not wanting to fail at this task, and trying to will myself to clear sight, I squinted and paused and guessed as I tried to make out the second to last line of letters.
“P, Q, X, R, M,” I said, hoping that I could fake my way through this trial.
“Actually, there are no letters up there yet,” my doctor said, trying his best to make a joke.
What he meant was that I got them wrong and had to move up to the next line that was visible to me.
That next row of letters might as well have spelled out “O-L-D M-A-N,” because that’s what I felt like as I had to give up the lower lines of my younger days for good.
After a few more tests, some stinging eye drops and a strange curling examination of the underside of my eyelids using a Q-tip, the doctor told me that the deterioration of my sight was an inevitable side effect of aging, but I still only needed glasses while reading or sitting in front of the computer for any length of time.
He showed me which of my two unused pairs of glasses still would benefit me and said “see you in a year.”
“Thanks, I’ll see you then,” I responded, thinking to myself that I’ll only see him if I’m wearing my dumb glasses.
I have accepted the need to wear reading glasses like I have accepted the need to floss my teeth every day. I know it’s what I should do and I know it’s something I can do. It’s just not something I can make myself do.
Maybe this will be the last column that I write without wearing my new specs. Or maybe I’ll just have to pull my chair a little closer to the desk next week. We’ll see (or not).
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. He can be reached by email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @AdamPBreen.
