Making a Spectacle of Myself

My arms are not long enough. It is not their fault.  There was a time that if I held them just so, along with scrunching up my face and squinting my eyes, I was able to read all the text on a page. What appears to be happening is that my arms are retracting and a full out conspiracy is in motion.

The way I figure it, since the onslaught of the industrial revolution and the development of finer quality paper, print has become smaller and smaller, allowing for more words to a page.  If you look back just 30 short years ago, when newspapers were delivered to your house by boys on bikes (remember when?), the presence of larger fonts, allowing for the rough hew of the newsprint, made the reading easier on your eyes.  Life was good then and my arms extended happily to their proper length.

Novelists, give or take the authors of “War and Peace” and a few others, did not seem to be as prolific as they are today.  I think computers and what they offer writers that typewriters and erasable bond paper didn’t are where one needs to point the finger.  Books now seem to be sold by weight and words are heavy, especially when they can cram thousands of them on a single page.  I know the publishers are being kind by selling books that don’t need a crane to lift, but if they could just make the letters a little larger and supply a small wagon for transport, I think more people would take to reading again instead of waiting for the movie to come out.

Everywhere you look street signs, greeting cards, newspapers and books, all are succumbing to this mad plot.  The ever shrinking word is overtaking the world.  Girls just want to have font!  How does one combat this evil?  By getting their eyes checked and actually wearing their glasses might be the first step.

When the world became a little too fuzzy to my eye, I thought a visit to my local, handy dandy ophthalmologist was pertinent.  Although I was suspect that he didn’t wear glasses (he may have contacts – I didn’t get that close), he was clear in his conclusion.  My eyes were not young anymore (either is my body, but we won’t go there) and they were unable to do what they once could by flexing themselves to read effectively.  The action was obvious; I had to get a pair of spectacles to help Mother Nature a bit.  They are trendy, don’t make me look too… well, whatever one thinks they look like when they wear glasses and are rather effective – if I put them on (and that is the key operative here).  I am losing my aversion to wearing them, especially when the correct choice on a menu depends on it.

In the attempt not to make a spectacle of myself, on go the glasses and up goes my clarity, accuracy and intelligibility (should have done this years ago).  The minute details I must have missed before the magnification would probably startle me, so I won’t worry about what might have been.  And my snuggle-buns… hmmm, he is looking pretty good himself and he thinks I look pretty enticing wearing the glasses… all is well that ends well – you’ll see.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-