The Village Idiot: You can count age by your glasses
I don’t count birthdays anymore. I count pairs of glasses. If you have more than seven, you’re getting up there. That’s one of the great things about being over the hill — you can’t see the bottom.
It’s so bad I need glasses to find my glasses. I have special glasses for the computer because the screen is too far for reading, too close for distance. I have glasses for reading in bed that are different from the glasses I use for reading at my desk. I have non-bifocals for golfing. I have prescription sunglasses.
But what I need are bifocal prescription sunglasses. So I can read a map in a car. So I can make out the little function buttons on the car radio. Who can see the little seeking or scanning buttons? How do you turn down the bass? I can never tell if I just turned on the defroster or the air conditioner. My feet feel like they’re being air-conditioned but my hands feel like they’re being heated. Where is the instruction manual? What does it matter? I can’t read it anyway. I left my reading glasses in the living room. Right beside the list of what I’m driving to the store to get. I’d go back and get them but the one thing I can see is a big ‘No U Turn’ sign.
I bought ski goggles that say they’re especially made to go over glasses. They don’t. What they’re especially made to do is mash my glasses into my face in the most painful way. They want $200 for a pair of prescription ski goggles. I’ve had it.
So when I saw an ad for that laser eye surgery — $499 an eye — I was ready for it. Why do they always say per eye? Is someone planning to have just one eye done? I guess it sounds cheaper. I tell my buddy Carlton I’m thinking of having laser eye surgery. He looks at me like I’ve just told him I’m going to start wearing big, gold hoop earrings and a blond wig. He says, “Are you really that vain?”
At least that’s what I think he said. It seems on most of us, the eyes and the ears go south at the same time. What’s weird is how selective it is. I can hear the music they play in a restaurant. I can hear every single thing every single person says at the incredibly noisy table next to us. I can hear the silverware drop in the back of the room. The only thing I can’t hear is the waiter.
“Giant Fried Sea Slugs? What kind of a special is that? Why would anyone order that?” I ask.
Sue is moving her mouth.
“What?”
“He said ‘Fried Onion Rings.’ What’s the matter? Ya deaf?”
“No, I am not deaf. I can hear everything. Do you see that guy in the corner table?” I was nodding at a place forty feet from where we sat across the crowded restaurant. “He just ordered the BBQ rib platter with extra coleslaw and french fries.”
“This is a rib place. Ninety percent of the people in here order that.”
Soon I saw the waiter bringing a big tray loaded with food to the guy at the corner table. “Now we’ll see who can hear and who can’t,” I said. I put on my seeing-things-that-are-forty-feet-away glasses just in time to see our mush-mouthed waiter put down a plate of roast chicken with a side of onion rings.
Sue said, “Well?”
I said, “He probably won’t get our order right, either.”
(Jim Mullen contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at [email protected].)