BIFOCALS!!

I am not a candidate for contacts. It takes at least a dozen very big muscular men to hold me down to put eye drops into my eyes. My ophthalmologist even agrees whole-heartedly that I should never think about contacts.

This past week I had the new eye exam where they shoot a little puff of air into the eye and they had to threaten to rope me down with zip ties. I managed to live through that part and then they took me into the room with the big E and which line can you see best and I was right at home. Then it was picking out frames and adjusting the bifocal line.

It all brought back memories of the first time I had to have bifocals. It was almost twenty years ago when they'd started making the print on those new best selling romances too small. But did my eye doctor call the publishing companies and tell them to make the print the right size? Oh, no! He said I needed bifocals.

Those things were for old women. Sure, I had gray hair and a few extra fat cells that were getting hit hard by gravity but that did not make me old. There could be another way, please, doc.

Nope! Bifocals or stop reading. So bifocals it was. Stopping reading would be worse than stopping breathing or eating.

No problem. I was a strong, well-adjusted woman who could age with dignity. And I was right in the middle of a good book so bring on the challenge of something new.

He wrote up the prescription. Pay at the desk then go pick out frames. When I got through with the pay at the desk part, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to afford to eat for the next six months. My fat cells wept with anguish and my hair turned another shade lighter.

The place should have been draped in red velvet and had gold gilded chairs to sit upon while they brought out all the expensive frames. My check book tried to crawl out of my purse and run away when they started talking about the price of bifocals, no-line lenses and whether I might change my mind about contacts. I kept waiting for them to bring me a tray of finger foods to nibble on and maybe a bottle of wine to ease the pain of writing that check.

I came home and waited a week until they called to say my bifocals were ready. I picked them up at the pay at the desk and there wasn't wine, finger foods or even a gold and diamond case to keep the new priceless treasures inside when I wasn't wearing them.

But I was so excited because now I could read the last part of my book.

Wrong thinking there, Carolyn Brown!

How could I read when I couldn't find my hand in front of my face? There was a horizontal line that ran right across my palm. The doctor had warned me that there would be a line but that my mind would tune it out quickly.

Wrong again! My mind doesn't do anything quickly. Three weeks later I couldn't read and the important thing wasn't whether Lula Irene, the character in the romance book, was sleeping with the neighbor. Or if her husband was frolicking with the maid. I just hoped that the local police didn't pick me up for drunk walking down the sidewalk when I went from my work place to the City Drug store for a Dr Pepper.

I was complaining about bifocals in a café when a genius lady in the next booth leaned back and gave me a great piece of advice. She said to go into the bathroom and put my glasses on every morning. When I could navigate the bathroom then I was ready for the rest of the house. I tried it and it only took a month. But these days the eye doctor said about something called tri-focals. Just the mention of the word sent me straight out of his office, past the pay at the desk place, out to my car and straight home. I didn't even care about the finger foods and the pretty little frames in the next room.