Along with the other things you lose at my age, like your keys and your grocery ist, you may notice that you’re losing your visual sharpness. You can see, but not as well as you did when you were 25.
Because there’s not much I can do about it, I’m trying to county my own reduced vision as an advantage.
It takes me a minute to focus on the printed word now, which actually provides me with some interesting insights into life.
I was reading a book the other day and thought I read, “a mis-shaven pumpkin.” Why in the world would you shave a pumpkin? I wondered. Are they all shaved before we buy them in the fall? They look so smooth!
Then I looked closer and realized that it said “mishapen pumpkin”—one with a strange shape. Well, that made more sense.
Later in the same book I thought I read, “To say that she was dumb was an undergarment.”
Hey, I’ve had some dumb undergarments, I thought. Like the panties that finally lost their last shred of elastic on my walk home from school one day, forcing me to plop down on the curb, trying to look as if I found the concrete interesting, to try to scrunch my undies back up before they fell around my ankles right in front of my buddies. But what did malfunctioning panties have to do with a person?
Oh, wait. A second look with my eyes scrunched up tighter revealed that the author had said, “understatement,” not “undergarment.” I thought I’d better rest my eyes before I finished that chapter.
And the other day I wheeled into the parking lot of a local nursery because I thought their sign said “PETS for sale,” and I’m a sucker for a pet.
What the sign really said, when I stopped and got all the letters in focus, was “POTS for sale.” I can’t resist a pet, but I can definitely resist a pot. I have too many pots now, and each one represents a lot of work if I fill them with plants.
Actually, I have too many pets too, but I believe that while you can have too many pots, you can never have too many pets sprawled across your lap watching TV.
I backed carefully out of the parking lot without any pets or any pots.
A sign around town that startles me every time I pass it is the one that says “Buy CPAP and CPAP Cleaning Supplies.”
But at first glance, every time I see this sign, my eyes translate it as “Buy CRAP and CRAP Cleaning Supplies.” This has happened so many times that when I see the sign now, I take an extra second to focus on it.
Before that happens, though, this thought flashes through my mind: “Why would you buy crap? My dogs produce a supply of it every day. All I’d have to do is go out in the yard and get all I want free. But why would I want it? And what would I do with it once I gathered it?
And the “Crap Cleaning Supplies” part really bothers me. How do you clean crap? And pardon my use of the word in a family newspaper, but even if you clean it, what do you get? I mean, it’s ... you know...crap. I don’t think you can clean it up to re-use, can you?
By that time, my focus has sharpened and I realize my mistake. Oh, it’s CPAP, like for people who snore while sleeping.
My visual mistakes confuse me for a moment, but I think it’s healthy for your brain to grapple with such conundrums from time to time.
There are other advantages to not seeing everything in sharp focus. Like not seeing things on the floor that should be vacuumed up or the dust that’s accumulating on the blinds in the bathroom. If I don’t see it, I don’t feel compelled to stop reading my book or drinking my coffee or watching TV with my dogs to grab the vacuum cleaner or the dust cloth and clean up.
I’ve also found it helpful when I decide to invite someone over if I choose guests who don’t see the dust bunnies or the smudges on the cabinets any better than I do. That means, I prefer my dinner guests to be other senior adults whose vision isn’t any better than mine. To most of us, the dust bunnies on the floor just look like a nice pattern on the tile.
I do go to the eye doctor twice a year to make sure that my sight is basically still functioning. It still works but is gradually decreasing, he says. Most of our conversations begin with “Well, at your age....” And he is watching as my cataracts mature, so cataract surgery lurks in my future.
So far, though, the only glasses I wear are readers that I buy at the drugstore, and I don’t look forward to transitioning into the real glasses that I will have to wear all the time. I suppose they would have to be bifocals, and my friends who wear them say they can drive you crazy until you get used to having to look up for distance and down for close work. Like finding my keys and my grocery lists.
But when I finally make the transition to real specs, I’m going to miss the entertainment and mental stimulation that imperfect vision is giving me now.
