On keeping your chin up (bit of a rant)

[ShadowHM]

I have spent a blurry month getting used to my new eyeglasses. I had to break down and get a pair because my vision changed (yet again).

For a couple of years, the encroachment of time has forced me to wear reading glasses. I just couldn't stand far enough across the aisle in the grocery store to read the damn fine print telling me the ingredient lists on packaged food anymore. :mad: This was easily cured by a couple of pairs of drug store glasses, one to live in the car and the other to live in the house.

Then, this summer, I found that my distance vision was slipping. There were stars missing from my favourite constellations. Since a cosmic event of that magnitude surely would have been widely reported, I knew I had a problem.

So I made an appointment with an optometrist (two month waiting list there, drat), got a new prescription and went hunting for eyeglasses. I wanted a pair I could wear all the time, so as not to suffer from the dreaded "Where the hell did I put them down this time" syndrome. I settled on something called 'progressive' lenses. They offer the benefit of having no line across the lens but I was advised that it might take a couple of weeks to 'train' myself to use them. It has taken longer than that.

I had never realized that I do not tend to look at things levelly. (I know I am asking for a wisecrack on that observation. ) I keep my chin up. Now part of this is probably due to a lifetime of being (not to put too fine a point on it) short in a world full of tall people. I am 5'4" tall. My husband is 6' tall. Most of my family is tall. Virtually all of my friends are taller than me. And this all means that when I use my 'normal' posture, I am looking through the 'reading' section of the glasses.

I can think of all manner of other ways to (pardon the bad pun) look at this problem. Do I 'look down my nose' at everyone? Or did I take to heart those childhood admonishments to 'keep your chin up' when facing a world of adversity?

At any rate, undoing a lifetime habit is proving difficult. One of these days I will get there, I hope.

[Doc]

Hey! I am five foot five... And I take offense to being called "short." Five foot four... Sheesh. Nothing wrong with that.

I had to do much the same thing. I wear bifocals. After a while, you just... Adjust. It becomes second nature to cock your head in what ever pose works and you don't think about it. Just stop thinking about it and the problem with magically just go away.

I even have special bifocals just for the library. Not only is the reading part on the bottom of the lense, it's also on the top edge, allowing me to scan effortlessly books on shelves made for the big fat clumsy inconsiderate rude self absorbed boorish giants that inhabit this world and make everything based on their needs, never thinking of us wee folk. Pricks. Ask your eye doctor or eye glass maker about them... They are life savers. I use mine for more then going to the library. Also handy for when you are doing overhead work, like painting a detailed border or ivy leaves around the top wainscotting or what ever it's called in your kitchen or other rooms. Allows you to look "up" naturally and read or look at whatever, with out having to tilt up your nose.

[Scrape]

Not only is the reading part on the bottom of the lense, it's also on the top edge, allowing me to scan effortlessly books on shelves made for the big fat clumsy inconsiderate rude self absorbed boorish giants that inhabit this world and make everything based on their needs, never thinking of us wee folk. Pricks.

That's not entirely true. In grocery stores, they put most of the best cereals on the rows that are level with your eyes.

My vision went from perfect (or what we're told to believe as perfect) as a young child to incredibly horrid as an old, immature adult.

I still dislike wearing glasses, and I dislike contacts even more. However, I rarely wear my glasses (usually only when watching movies).