Oh my eyes!

So I've noticed, since I began needing reading glasses, oh, about three minutes after turning 40, that my eyes have been getting progressively worse. This is really depressing. Especially since my grandmother, who is 96, has only just STARTED needing glasses to read. What's up with that?? I comfort myself by attributing my own diminishing eyesight to all those years spent reading in dim light -- while hearing my mother admonish me that doing so would "ruin your eyesight." Guess she was right on that one.

It wasn't so bad at first: I bought a pair of inexpensive readers at the local dollar store, and pulled them out whenever I needed to read the small print on the medicine bottle. The part that tells you the dosage. That progressed to needing them to read the newspaper, then the computer screen, till really they pretty much spend the whole day sitting on top of my head, waiting for me to need to read ANYTHING.

The dilemma, of course, is that I don't need them for anything BUT reading. Which makes following printed directions while driving especially challenging. I put them on to glance at the directions, whip them off to peer through the windshield, back on to check the directions -- well, you get the picture. And even worse is the tiny screen on my cell phone: I flip it open, click to the contact list, then squint and try to make out the names. Scrolling through the list, I think I can just see the letters enough to identify the name, choose the number, and press "send", praying that I'm calling the actual person I need to talk to. It's like phone roulette. Seriously, it's hard to look cool using your cell phone if you first need to root around in your handbag for the reading glasses that have migrated to the bottom. It's hard to look cool any time you have to perch glasses on the end of your nose and peer through to read the screen that your teenage daughter can see in dim light.

Of course, it's even less cool to ask said daughter to read the screen FOR you. I guess it may finally be time to get those bifocals...sigh.