You've seen those studies that say "The average American spends two years of his life waiting at traffic signals."
I want someone to do a study on how long we spend looking for our glasses. I suspect I have already wasted five years looking for my glasses, and I've only had them for six.
The thing is, I can't find my glasses without my glasses. Like most of the rest of the American population, once I hit 45, my eyesight hit 70. Overnight, phone books were inscrutable. The movie theater ad became indecipherable, the church bulletin unreadable. Instead of trying to see the directions on how to open a container, it got quicker to just get the sledgehammer.
By the time I reached 50, I couldn't see the sledgehammer.
That was the end of my close vision. My distance vision I lost decades ago, in third grade. My teacher kept moving me closer to the board until finally I was getting chalk on my nose. First came an at-home reading test involving a cereal box at 20 paces (Me: "It says 'Cheerios.'" Mom: "Can you read it?" Me: "No, I just know it says 'Cheerios.'"). Then my parents took me to the family doctor, where I identified the big "E" on the eye chart as "a smudge."
I don't know what cooked my eyesight -- I suspect "Betty and Veronica" comic books. Whatever it was, by age 9 I was choosing glasses without actually being able to see what I was looking at. And I went for frames with pale blue trim studded with tiny silver stars -- real princessy -- which, happily, went with my shiny metal braces. I had more chrome than a Chrysler.
The interesting thing is, when I was a kid, I never lost my glasses. They were either on my face or on the dresser next to my bed, because once I took them off I fell down. Without my glasses, the only thing I could see well enough to do was sleep.
Eventually I got contact lenses, and then radial keratotomy surgery. But once I hit 45, my nearsightedness began to switch to farsightedness and I began buying "reading glasses" at the drug store.
I started out with one pair, which I could never find. Then I bought a pair for every purse, which I could never find, and then one pair for every room in the house and then one pair for every jacket pocket. I have about $5,000 in $3-a-pair reading glasses, but I'm beginning to think they're like cockroaches -- as soon as the lights come on, they scatter.
Now, because reading glasses don't help me see across the room, I have prescription bifocals to see both near and far. These buggers cost more than $400 so I don't have but one pair and I can spend an hour a day searching. Truth be known, they can be right under my nose -- or even on top of it -- and I can't see them.
So I want to know: How much time does the average mature adult spend looking for his/her glasses? If I'm going to spend five years at it, I think I'm done.
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