Specs appeal

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I spent a good chunk of my Friday on a contact lens appointment. Because my body is as contradictory as I sometimes am, my left eye is far-sighted while the right sees things better from up close. It’s a balance that works out, but sometimes one eye overcompensates and I end up with a massive headache.

I’ve been flirting with wearing glasses for the past few years but made the mistake of getting them whenever I was in the Philippines for a visit which means follow-ups couldn’t be done. And anyone worth his salt knows when it comes to glasses, follow-ups are important because you never get it right the first time.

Anyway, I’d already gotten a prescription which made me see things from afar in wonderfully crisp detail, like the world was suddenly in high-def Ultra 4K. But it was messing with my reading, and words were blurring up close.

So I went back for the mandatory follow up, and that’s where I stopped being happy and started considering Lasik. If anything, I can see long distances, but I don’t quite care as much about that as I do being able to read. And somehow, after running what seemed like the gamut of lenses, I was back where I started, with busted eyesight and seemingly no answers. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because I chose contact lenses? I have no idea. The one shining spot is I am apparently not ready for bifocals, which I was given to understand are for the olds. But that’s beside the point.

The point is, when you get older and the mind-body connection starts to fray, sometimes you find yourself standing in an optician’s office contemplating the merits of allowing someone to laser a layer off your corneas because it’s just too frustrating to have yet another lens held up to your eyes. The human body is a machine susceptible to the long-term effects of constant use. We are all eventually going to be witness to, and subject of, an excruciatingly-slow sort of wear and tear, physically breaking down like an apple left in a fruit bowl too long. It’s one thing to know about it, and another to live through it.

It’s a realization that’s been hitting really close to home since I was up in Ottawa last month, spending the night with my cousins before my aunt’s funeral in Montreal. My other aunt, who is a hoot, made me laugh with stories of her physical travails. Getting into a car is a whole production, involving first a foot, then a leg, then hauling the rest of herself into the vehicle, cane hooked over her right arm, the whole song and dance made even more precarious when the driveway is iced over because getting old in the Great White North is a complete funhouse.

It’s not a feeling one gets in one’s teens or twenties, when the body seems like Teflon and nothing seems to stick, but enter your thirties, and things start happening. Suddenly, hair isn’t as thick, waists aren’t as trim, comfort begins to be more of a priority, and the slow slide into questioning what you’ve done with your life so far begins.

I can already see my mid-life crisis rounding the bend. Give me a few more years. I’ll be a ready for my titanium hip, Mr. De Mille.

_______________________

Author’s Twitter: @nikkajow

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