We both went to the eye doctor this past week. The doctor has been predicting that I’d need cataract surgery very soon for the past several years. Once again this year he seemed a little disappointed — while I do have cataracts, they haven’t gotten bad enough yet to require surgery.
He seemed surprised that I could read almost all the letters on the eye chart… I told him that it was easy, I had memorized them from last year. I’m not sure he believed me, but he switched to a chart with numbers and had me read those.
I got to thinking about the first time, a long time ago, that I thought I might need reading glasses. We lived in Vienna, and I had never gone to an eye doctor in that area — in fact, I hadn’t been to any eye doctor in years. Anyhow, when Kelly was a baby, she had what looked like a freckle on the white part of one of her eye, and the baby doctor sent her to an eye specialist to check it out. (The freckle turned out to be nothing.)
So when I began to have trouble reading small print, since we weren’t familiar with any other eye doctors, Claire called the doctor we had taken Kelly to, and asked if they did eye exams. They said they did, so I made an appointment. In case I didn’t mention it, this doctor specialized in rare eye diseases and complex surgeries, like transplanting eyes and things like that.
After examining my eyes, the doctor said, “well, frankly, I don’t know what your problem is.” (Obviously when he found out I didn’t need an eye transplant, he wasn’t interested.) I said that I seemed to have problems reading small print. The doctor’s response was, “well, s**t, that happens to everyone when they get old.” I acknowledged that that was probably true and said, “I thought maybe I might need reading glasses or something.” The doctor said, “yea, that’s probably a good idea.” By this time I was getting a little frustrated and said, “do you know where I could get some?” His reply: “ Well, I can write you a prescription… but I’d just go to Ben Franklin.” I said that I thought Ben Franklin was a five and dime store. He said that it was and I should go there and they have a big rack full of reading glasses and that I should get a number 29 — he even wrote a big “#29” on a prescription form and handed it to me.
When I got home, Claire asked me how the appointment went — needless to say, I wasn’t happy and said something like, “I paid this guy $80 to tell me to go buy a pair of glasses at Ben Franklin.”
Well, it turns out that there weren’t very many Ben Franklin stores in the area, but we did have something called People’s Drug Stores — a few days later I was in People’s and they had a rack of reading glasses. They had various numbers and I found a pair that had a tag with #29 on them. I put them on and took a credit card out of my wallet and the small print on the back of the card literally “jumped out” — I could read it very easily. Obviously I bought the glasses — I think they were $9.95. I went home very excited and started reading all the small print I could find. I suppose Claire was pleased, but I don’t think she shared my enthusiasm.
Today, number 29s don’t do the trick anymore — I just give up on some small print and convince myself it probably isn’t very important anyway.
— 30 —