The last time I had my vision checked by a professional (which I'm a bit ashamed to admit was probably more than two years ago) I went through the same rigmarole I always go through. Before seeing the doctor, a young assistant took me back into the bowels of the office and put me through a number of tests for which I've always only had a hazy understanding of the purpose. She made me look into this eyepiece and a hot air balloon on the horizon went in and out of focus. She then had me look into this other device, told me to keep my eye open wide, and then blew air into my eye (The purpose of this test, I'm assuming, is to see if I'm dumb enough to keep my OTHER eye open wide when she does it to it, too!). She then had me stare at a red, shiny light for a long time (the purpose of which, I guess, is to see if I can be trusted with those hand scanners at the self checkout lanes). Finally, she had me read the eye chart on the wall, and then read a little book of colored dots with numbers inside of them, designed to see if I have color blindness. Finally, she handed me a piece of paper with tiny, tiny print on it."Please read the smallest line you can comfortably read," she said to me as she entered the results of my color blindness test into a computer.
Without hesitation I said, "Oh, I can read them all," I said. "No problem". I looked at the bottom line, which had 20/10 written beside it. "The bottom line says 'E-G-D-O-U."
The assistant hesitated before looking at me quizzically and saying, "Really? You can read that?"
"Yeah," I said. "Without issue. Why?"
"Most people your age struggle with their near vision. I'm surprised you did that well."
The assistant was young, in her early twenties, and attractive. I blinked a couple of times before saying, "'My Age'! How old do you think I am?"
She pointed to the computer screen. "I don't 'think' how old you are at all. It's right here on the screen. And most people your age are lucky to read the 20/20 line, much less the bottom line! That's all I'm saying. I'm not calling you old. It's pretty remarkable how good your near vision is...considering your age."
"'Considering your age'! There you go again!" I said. She just laughed and directed me into the examination room where the doctor would come in just a few minutes to examine me.
While I waited, I did the same things I always did in the chair--I read the pamphlets about eye disease and cataracts. Then, after what seemed like way too long a wait, the doctor came into the room. After a moment of chit chat, he looked over my chart, and he said to me, "You're over 40. Here. Look at this and read the smallest line you can read."
He handed me the identical chart I'd been handed by the assistant. Without hesitation I said, "E-G-D-O-U!"
"Wow!" he said in earnest. "That's pretty good."
The doctor is quite a bit older than I am, and maybe it was the age difference being reversed, but his comment had the exact opposite effect on me that the young assistant's had. Instead of making me feel old, I felt pretty good about myself. I beamed, in fact, and I said, maybe a little too proudly, "I know. Your assistant told me so, too!"
The doctor scowled at me out of the corner of his eye. He had the look of someone who was holding back what he really wanted to say. After several seconds he curtly replied, "Don't get cocky! You're not Superman." He rolled away from the examination chair using his special, doctors-only rolling chair, and said as he glided away, "Your time is coming."
And I'm writing today to say that apparently he was right. Over the last few months I've noticed that my near vision HAS gotten worse. The first time I noticed it was accidental. I'd gone to the grocery with my younger daughter and bought--for my older daughter--some hair care product (I actually forget what it was now). As I walked up the stairs to hand it to my older daughter, I examined the bottle. It was a product marketed towards teenagers, and it was a deep purple bottle with tiny, bright pink wording on the back of it. The contrast between the purple and pink was so distracting that, when combined with the tiny letters, I felt the entire back label was completely unreadable. I walked into my daughter's room, handed her the bottle and said, "Look at the print on this bottle! Why would anyone print something that you can't read? What's the point?"
She looked at the bottle, sighed, and said, "Dad! The writing is plain as day!" She then began reciting what was written on the back of the bottle.
I quickly grabbed the bottle and looked at the back again. "You can read that?"
"Yes," she said. "Hey, Natalie!" My younger daughter came in and--to complete my humiliation--began reading it was well. I stormed out of the room.
Last week I was at work fixing a loose toilet paper holder in the bathroom at the board of education (the work of a Chief Information Officer is never done and not always related to technology!) and crouched down to tighten a screw in the wall. And I couldn't tell, from the distance I was at, whether or not it was a Phillips screw or a standard screw. And it was at that moment that I knew it: My time has come! I guess I need to start looking at the reading glasses at the drug store...
