Thursday, April 29, 2004
It's Official...I'm Old
I'm at that stage where I need to be wearing eyeglasses most of the time. When I drive at night without them, visions of van Gogh's "Starry Nights" swirl before me. Late night tv watching has gone past the stage of squinting; any further smooshing of my eyelids and they'd be closed. I can't hold the newspaper far enough in the morning, so I've taken to taping it to the wall and stepping back, back, back gradually, until I can read the words clearly.
I've considered laser surgery for a while. Then my cd player started skipping and jumping and hiccupping. The techy at the store said that's what happens with lasers; they either need adjusting after 4-5 years or they're shot and need to be replaced completely. I know. I know. There's a difference between the lasers used for eye surgery and the ones that read your cd's....so..tell me the difference and see if you don't start having your doubts. A fellow at work swears by the laser surgery he's had. It also cured his allergies. Truly. The eye surgeon nor his allergist can explain how that happened. He does have some facial tics now. And he's started listening to Celine Dion. Makes for nervous early morning discussions at the coffee corner.
So, I've opted for keeping the glasses. To make sure that they are always handy (cuz I refuse to wear those senility chains around my neck to keep the glasses hanging around my neck, as if proclaiming "I'm really old and where are my???...oh, here they are.."), I've opted to own more than one pair. You know, have them around and handy. I wait for the optician to have one of those twofer sales and then I scoop up a pair of pairs. I have four now....I think.
One pair's at work.
Another's in the car.
A third's by the computer.
And a fourth is...is....well, they're somewhere else important.
But, you can see why I have other pairs around. You see, I couldn't really be that old since I have this eyewear thing so well planned and laid out. Now, if I could only find that fourth pair...
So, in the midst of conducting my eyeglass inventory, I ended up by my dresser. Pulling clothes and cedar chips out of the dresser, I got involved with the disposition of my jeans. Since, a lot of my clothes were rammed into the dresser, it was a bit difficult to extricate any one garment without pulling out a trail of other clothes. Quickly forgetting my previous task of remembering where that fourth pair of glasses were, I dumped out the drawer of blue jeans.
There were some pants I had not seen in a long time. 32 waists. That was more than a decade ago. 30 waists. I think Carter was in office. Making three piles, I sorted.
One stack was "Wearable Immediately".
Another pile was "After that Promised Weight Loss".
The last stack, and it was the biggest, was "Not in Your Lifetime, Buddy". At this point, I should have gone back to searching for the glasses. Instead, I started counting the items in each pile.
So, it is official. Two items in the "Wearable Immediately" pile. Three pairs (well actually four...that 4th has got to be around here somewhere) of eyeglasses. The score is 3 (or worse, 4) to 2 for the old guy. That's three (or four) pairs of corrective lenses to 2 pairs of jeans that fit. Time certainly doesn't wait for no man. So, it's massive weight loss time. Or, I could misplace some additional glasses....
I'm at that stage where I need to be wearing eyeglasses most of the time. When I drive at night without them, visions of van Gogh's "Starry Nights" swirl before me. Late night tv watching has gone past the stage of squinting; any further smooshing of my eyelids and they'd be closed. I can't hold the newspaper far enough in the morning, so I've taken to taping it to the wall and stepping back, back, back gradually, until I can read the words clearly.I've considered laser surgery for a while. Then my cd player started skipping and jumping and hiccupping. The techy at the store said that's what happens with lasers; they either need adjusting after 4-5 years or they're shot and need to be replaced completely. I know. I know. There's a difference between the lasers used for eye surgery and the ones that read your cd's....so..tell me the difference and see if you don't start having your doubts. A fellow at work swears by the laser surgery he's had. It also cured his allergies. Truly. The eye surgeon nor his allergist can explain how that happened. He does have some facial tics now. And he's started listening to Celine Dion. Makes for nervous early morning discussions at the coffee corner.
So, I've opted for keeping the glasses. To make sure that they are always handy (cuz I refuse to wear those senility chains around my neck to keep the glasses hanging around my neck, as if proclaiming "I'm really old and where are my???...oh, here they are.."), I've opted to own more than one pair. You know, have them around and handy. I wait for the optician to have one of those twofer sales and then I scoop up a pair of pairs. I have four now....I think.
One pair's at work.Another's in the car.
A third's by the computer.
And a fourth is...is....well, they're somewhere else important.
But, you can see why I have other pairs around. You see, I couldn't really be that old since I have this eyewear thing so well planned and laid out. Now, if I could only find that fourth pair...
So, in the midst of conducting my eyeglass inventory, I ended up by my dresser. Pulling clothes and cedar chips out of the dresser, I got involved with the disposition of my jeans. Since, a lot of my clothes were rammed into the dresser, it was a bit difficult to extricate any one garment without pulling out a trail of other clothes. Quickly forgetting my previous task of remembering where that fourth pair of glasses were, I dumped out the drawer of blue jeans.
There were some pants I had not seen in a long time. 32 waists. That was more than a decade ago. 30 waists. I think Carter was in office. Making three piles, I sorted.
One stack was "Wearable Immediately".
Another pile was "After that Promised Weight Loss".
The last stack, and it was the biggest, was "Not in Your Lifetime, Buddy". At this point, I should have gone back to searching for the glasses. Instead, I started counting the items in each pile.
So, it is official. Two items in the "Wearable Immediately" pile. Three pairs (well actually four...that 4th has got to be around here somewhere) of eyeglasses. The score is 3 (or worse, 4) to 2 for the old guy. That's three (or four) pairs of corrective lenses to 2 pairs of jeans that fit. Time certainly doesn't wait for no man. So, it's massive weight loss time. Or, I could misplace some additional glasses....
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