About a month ago I decided I couldn’t put it off any longer and went and had my eyes tested. Because being able to see street signs before you’re right on top of them would save me some frustration from having to do u-turns, and others from the frustration of me decreasing my speed suddenly in my attempt to avoid having to do a u-turn. So in the best interests of everyone I had my eyes tested.
This is not the first time I’ve been in to have my peepers checked out though. The first was when I was a young thing (oh, way back then!) when I had a lazy eye. My mum swears the first time it happened was when they arrived home from hospital with my new younger sister. They walked in the door and I looked at them and turned one eye in crazily. I think there was always an inference I was jealous of my sister. I’m pretty sure I was just trying to focus on that little ugly pink monkey they’d strangely decided to bring home. Okay, shes not ugly, and she doesn’t look like a monkey but that’s just between you and me, she doesn’t need to know. Anyway, after some years of wearing a patch and being mortified about said patch because quite frankly it didn’t make me look like a way cool pirate, it just confirmed my nerd status with the rest of my classmates, and then an eye operation to correct the lazy eye, and okay, nerd scale went down and cool scale went up, slightly, after that, and then eye exercises which I only pretended to do because there was no way that lion was going in that cage no matter how many times tried, I finally ended up in glasses at about age fourteen. The thing was I really, really wanted glasses at the time. So I pretended I couldn’t read the letters. And I finally got my wish and they got me glasses. Except I never actually wore them. Because it turns out when you pretend you need them when you don’t you can’t actually see out of them. I’m pretty sure that to this day my mum thinks my eyesight deteriorated because I never wore my glasses as a kid. Turns out though that my deteriorating eyesight had nothing to do with that and everything to do with…getting OLD!
Sigh.
So three years ago I go and see my doc, who is lovely, but his sense of humour amuses him more than me. Okay, I find him pretty funny. Except about the age thing. I tell him I think I need my eyes tested. Well, it could be a good idea at your age he says. Hmmm. So I get a referral to an eye specialist. Who tells me it’s normal to have deterioration at my age. AT MY AGE! But softens the blow by saying I’m still young enough to avoid glasses for the time being and my eyes aren’t that bad. He then let me out the door with blurry vision eye drops in and I had to negotiate my way to the train station through the darkening streets where the street lights became a blurred line of blinding starbursts while a freakish congregation of squawking birds screeched at me as I passed them. I somehow survived this Hitchcock moment and made it to the station without getting run over or pecked to death.
Three years later though and I’m back to the optometrists who tell me I now need specs due to my age related sight deterioration. Age related. At least the old lazy eye not being as strong as my good eye thing is a factor too and its not just about my age. Or maybe it is and I’m just looking for an excuse.
But here’s the thing. I need long and short distance help. So, they put me in a pair of reading glasses and a pair of multi-focals. But I’ve spent the better part of the past four weeks rotating my head from side to side to try and get the focus right through the reading bit. Shame about the crick in my neck. But that’s not important. At least I can see road signs just fine. That bit is great. And I can see through my reading glasses just fine. That bit is great too. It’s just all the other bits. Like trying to see stuff on my dashboard without circling my head around like a game wheel, or reading through the multi-focals without having to turn my head at a weird angle to read through the bottom of them. I noticed this tricky reading through the bottom thing when I picked them up but they assured me it was just about getting used to multi-focals. Except the weird head turning thing didn’t go away after one, two, three or four weeks. I closed my left eye and read out of the right side perfectly. I closed my right eye and couldn’t see a thing. I tried it again. And again. And again. Still blurry. So I got retested. And had the multi-focals realigned. And the script is being adjusted. And I now wait two weeks to see if making me new glasses will help.
So, it’s back to u-turning for a couple of weeks, and I’m now off to see my physio about my hip. Which is NOT age related. Or maybe it is. But if he knows what’s good for him he’ll use words like elite sporting related overuse even if it has more to do with age than any real athletic prowess.
The glasses that work.
AbiRoad 
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