I only needed ’em for distance vision, so they were always near things that I had to read, or small stuff that I had to sort through
“Okay, let’s try retracing your steps for the last couple of hours. Where have you been since the last time you remember actually wearing them?”
Yeah. I guess I need a glasses bra.
The situation before cataract surgery:
I only needed ’em for distance vision, so they were always near things that I had to read, or small stuff that I had to sort through.
I usually left ’em on A Flat Surface. Any flat surface would do, but I tried to leave ’em on top of a tall speaker at the corner of the couch. It was nice and central and highly visible. But, as often as not, they ended up on top of my computer, or behind the keyboard, or beside my reading nest.
The term has been added to the family lexicon – “A Flat Surface: any horizontal area more or less free of clutter where one can set an item temporarily.” See: “Temporary: “five minutes to six months.”
Almost always, the situation involved a family search. Fresh eyes checking every conceivable Flat Surface in the house.
“Okay, let’s try retracing your steps for the last couple of hours. Where have you been since the last time you remember actually wearing them?”
It very quickly became clear: That instruction does not narrow down the search at all! Now we were looking for Flat Surfaces three inches by six inches in area and as much as an arm’s length plus a step from whatever I might have been looking at. Jeez!
Tiny space next to the small parts cabinet in the pantry? No. In front of the toilet paper stash next to the freezer? No. On top of the battery charger next to some open boxes of tools and screws in the plastic garden shed? Nope.
How ’bout the C-can a hundred and ten yards down the hill where my workshop used to be? I used to waste a lot of time down there looking for missing tools, small parts, and nuts and bolts. There were plenty of tiny Flat Surfaces within reach of containers of small things.
When was the last time you heard the word exasperating?
After cataract surgery:
Holy swan poop, Batman! From the hill behind our place I can see the swans on Shallow Bay! A mile away! I can see one taking off to test the air for migration.
But the glasses situation has reversed itself. Now I need reading glasses. It never ends for us old guys does it?
So there’s a pair of my wife’s old reading glasses – strength unknown, but they work – at my computer that I can wear halfway down my nose if I need to read an Atco bill while I’m paying it. A decent pair of 1.50s at my reading nest, three really cheap, plastic, impossible-to-keep-clean, crap pairs of 1.50s that are seldom where I need ’em, and a pair of good 2.50s in the truck. I’m guessing that the numbers indicate magnification.
It’s really nice that it doesn’t take the whole fam damly to go lookin’ for ’em.
But the best part of it, apart from the swans, is that the gun club found me a genuine pair of Bushnell shooting glasses and I don’t have to put up with plastic distortion of safety goggles.
Zero magnification, they reside in my range kit.
