The Eyes Have It

The rumor is true. The myth has been confirmed. The first thing to go on your body when you turn forty is... your
eyesight. (Openings like that tend to make the editor extremely nervous.)

But, to continue on with my findings, I never used to have problems with my eyesight until I turned forty. I must
confess, three-fifths of my family wear some sort of eye wear. However, I've always been blessed with twenty-twenty vision. There was a time that I could spot a quarter on the ground, a mile away, and be able to tell you the year on it. Now, I'm lucky I don't walk into the side of a Wells Fargo truck.

When I was younger, I used to love to read. Now, it's a real chore. In fact, I'm typing this article, right now, while my friend is holding the computer screen from across the room. I believe the doctors call this
"farsightedness." An appropriate name for a condition that requires one to read the small print on a contract from a helicopter.

Sure, I could get fitted with glasses, but then I'd have to face all my family and friends, telling me how good I look in them and then listen to their snickers and comments about how much I look like Great Grandpa Megill, just
before they took away his driver's license for pulling up to a drive-in window at the bank and ordering a Big Mac.

The thing that bothers me most is driving at night. I used to be able to drive down a dark highway, in the middle of
the night, with a stream of cars coming at me, with their high beams on and never squint. Now, I need to wear
sunglasses if they have their parking lights on.

Driving at night is even more of an adventure. All those little beams of light, shining through the prisms of the
raindrops on my windshield, makes it look like there's an invasion of extraterrestrials in front of me.

Forget about trying to find a house number or read a street sign at night. By the time I focus on what street it is,
I'm two blocks passed it. This disturbing inability to read signs while driving is probably the inner most secret
behind why there are few pizza delivery guys over forty.

My girlfriend has tried to encourage me into going to the optometrist, ophthalmologist, or one of those "ists", to
have my eyes examined, just in case I do need glasses. She says that I'm crazy about the stigma behind wearing glasses. What I don't want to tell her is that I'm afraid that all those years of calling my brother "four-eyes" is going to come back to haunt me.

My girlfriend suggested that I wear contact lenses. I don't know. The thought of purposely sticking a piece of plastic in my eye sounds about as appealing as drilling my own teeth with a Craftsman Cordless Power Drill.

I guess I'll just continue on the path that I'm headed down and wait until they hook me up to a German shepherd to make it across the street. Besides, my girlfriend has been bugging me about getting a dog anyway.