Tiny Prints
by Chandroo D.
Prints today, are incredibly small!
In a scene familiar to many Boomers, I found myself recently standing in a super market aisle, holding a bottle of tomato ketchup at arm’s length in order to bring into focus the ridiculously tiny words. “When did children with 20/20 vision start designing all our consumer products?” I wondered. Perhaps the manufacturers do not want us to read the ingredients. If you complain, they would respond with 'Didn't you read the fine print?" I might as well carry a magnifying glass round my neck in future when shopping.
Fine prints are all over the place. Lawyers, bankers, pharmaceutical company and consumer goods manufacturers all use it in some way or the other. Some want us to read them and sign at the bottom of a contract. Wonder who reads all the lengthy fine prints on a contract for example, when it is obvious that all clauses are in favour of the issuer. We are all held at their mercy, if we ever contradict or default. The only persons who probably read them are the modern age Sherlock Holmes type legal authorities with large magnifying glasses.
An acquaintance of mine plans to carry a handbag some day. When he goes out to a restaurant, his wife normally asks him to carry her tissues and her reading glasses. When they get to a restaurant and time to read the menu, she strains to read the menu.
"Do you want your reading glasses?"
"No"
"Then why are you holding the menu so far away?"
"Oh, I can see. It's just a little dark in here"
Call it a denial or a case of vanity, a person needs to face the fact that like everyone else, as we age, our eyes too age along with us. Gradually, we are unable to see and focus on objects close up or far away.
It is something not to be ashamed of. If you hang around with people in their 40s upwards, I am sure majority of them have their reading glasses handy and if not, they would be asking someone else to read the menu to them.
Some people, I know, carry a number of spectacles around. Designer sun glasses; clear prescription ones for long distance and clear prescription ones for reading. It is like carrying a golf bag with choices of golf clubs. "Which one should I take out today? Is it sunny outside? Is it raining outside? Am I going to a restaurant today? Am I driving today? Decisions, decisions! And as we age, there will be a day when we will not able to locate our spectacle as it will be clipped to our head away from our sight!
As a student, I started wearing spectacles when I was unable to see the blackboard clearly. I could see the pretty teacher though. Generally, I can read a book or work on my laptop clearly without spectacles but need them for distance, like driving or admiring the birds.
Since years now, I wear a bifocal progressive spectacle. This has an invisible horizontal barrier separating a distance level, which is at eye level from my reading level which is on the bottom section. The lenses also come in transition version. This allows the lenses to darken to a sunglasses tint when exposed to sunlight or U/V ultraviolet, and return to a clear state when indoors, away from U/V light. I call this a '3 functions all-in-one masterpiece'. This way I can travel with one spectacle which serves all my requirements.
I want be surprised that one day medical science will come up with replacing our out-of-focus eyeballs with 3-D 20/20 versions.