Whizzing through the house quickly clearing away the clutter on surfaces, I stopped halfway down the hall with one startling thought, “I just put my glasses where I will not be able to find them.”
I was so right. Two weeks passed before I opened the kitchen junk drawer and there they were – one pair of prescription glasses. I should have known better than to pay much for prescription glasses. But, after several years of buying readers in multiples, to be lost one at a time, I had finally relented and replaced the inexpensive readers from the store.
I bought them because the eye doctor assured me I could not pass an eye exam at the Revenue Office to renew my driver’s license. I promised myself I would wear them. I bought them because I thought I had finally matured enough to keep track of the things.
I had, after all, spent several years using readers. First, I needed a bit of help to work on my cross stitch projects. Until I bought my own, I grabbed my husband’s glasses to aim the needle accurately. Then I realized I could see the computer words better with a bit of magnification, so I bought a pair to keep at work and another pair for the computer at home.
Of course, I bought them off the rack at the store. Seeking to find the magnification I needed, I stood at the rotating racks, trying to see how I looked in that little mirror wearing a pair of glasses with a price tag dangling down my nose or beside my ear.
Once I knew which magnification worked for me, I bought two or three pairs. And then, I began losing the things. At work, I simply set the wireless glasses on the multi-colored desk pad. They blended in so well that I literally had to pat my hand across the desk to find them.
Or, I dropped them on our bed’s comforter while changing shirts. I forgot I had put them there, sat down to put on my shoes and squashed the things.
I am not alone in my dilemma. A friend frequently forgets she shoves her glasses to the top of her head, looks around, grabs another pair and, before you know it, she sports two or three pair serving as headbands.
Because I kept losing glasses, or breaking them, I bought more glasses. I bought them in bundles of two or three. I left one on the exercise machine so I could read and forget the misery of exercising, one on the bed stand for night time reading and another pair or two in the living room for watching television and sewing.
Wearing glasses to watch TV helps, but I quickly realized (before I was told I needed bifocals) that I need one kind of glasses for stitching and another for watching.
Rather than switch them on and off, I wore two pair of glasses at once. One set just beneath the other so I could look down and see to do my handwork.
Okay, so it sounds a bit funny, but it worked for me.
When I finally succumbed and purchased the bifocals, I discovered another TV-watching inconvenience. I cannot lay down on the couch and see the screen clearly while wearing bifocals. In that position I am looking through the part of the glasses designed for reading. I tried turning the glasses upside down when I want to lay on the couch while watching television. It worked just great.
If anyone comes, I sit up and turn the glasses right side up.
Glasses, what a nuisance. Can’t see to walk down steps with them, can’t read without them.
We have such a dependency on the things after a certain age, it’s difficult to realize how great the dependency is until age hits. An associate refused to seek help or even point out her husband’s lost glasses – even when she knew exactly where they were. She said she was not going to foster dependency.
Then she needed glasses and began talking about how many pair she kept around the house, so she could find at least one pair.
Even when I ordered the prescription lenses, I paid as little as I could. There is no sense paying a great deal for something I will just lose, scratch or forget so easily. I know they won’t last long enough to take advantage of the scratch resistance warranty against damage.
Personally, I am waiting for the day that someone invents a pair of glasses that will automatically change their magnification to whatever I need: working at a computer, reading a book or working on cross stitch.
Until then, look for this loser in front of the rack of readers in the drug store.