"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision
and strengthens our most fatal tendency --
the belief that the here and now is all there is."
-- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
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| Reading Glasses and a really good book 5-6-14 |
"I have two pairs of reading glasses.
One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction.
I've read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it's the same."
I'm at that age where I have to hold anything I want to read at arm's length and squint real hard at it.
Labels at the grocery store. The program at a show. Wine lists and menus. A baseball schedule.
When it's still a blur, I've begun doing this thing where I'll ask my husband or one of my kids to "tell me what this says." Or, I'll just give up. So what if the jam is full of poison chemicals and corn syrup? Toss it in the cart! Who needs menus and wine lists? I can just order one of the specials that the waiter described and ask him to to bring me a glass of whatever he recommends to go with it. And that program? Who needs it? It's just a bunch of ads. Pay attention to the show, dammit!
Yes, I wear glasses, which do a Cracker Jack job of focusing my vision most of the time. But my regular glasses are no longer up to the task of reading and other close-up work. My optometrist has gently thrown around the b-word --bifocals -- but I balk at the thought. I feel like it's a slippery slope.
I'm afraid that once I go bifocal I'll start wearing beige sneakers and sun visors and sweatshirts with embroidered applique, and worrying how long I can talk on a long distance phone call, and doing crosswords on the toilet, and soaking my teeth in a jar at night, and calling people "Sonny," and tucking tissues up my sleeve, and no longer plucking my chin whiskers, and drinking Ensure, and liking Fox News, and repeating myself, and tucking tissues up my sleeve.
I'm just not ready to go there yet.
So in addition to my regular glasses, I have my "cheaters" -- inexpensive plastic magnifiers from the drug store that pump up the print size so I can see what I'm reading, and keep the b-word at bay.
So far, they do a good enough job. I don't need a huge magnification number yet. And even though I've had to switch up a couple of times, there are still lots and lots of stronger ones for me to try before I run out of possibilities. Best of all, they are not bifocals, so I can still cling to the illusion that I am not rapidly schussing down the slippery slope.
Sonny, that's a good thing.
