Speeding Towards Old

But at least I'll be too blind to stop when I get there.

I have had glasses since I was 5. Twice, I've spent months wearing an eyepatch that left me looking like an extra on Pirates of the Caribbean. I was pretty psyched, the first time. When you're 5, you can work a pirate's eye patch. For the first week, I threw in a peg-leg limp and a scowl. I even sometimes remembered to scrunch one shoulder up, hoping the other kids would think I'd just left the parrot home. I was sure someone would assume I was a pirate transfer student, from wherever pirate toddlers went to preschool. Yes, I was that pathetic. During my entire school career, that's the closest I ever came to "cool".

These days, without my glasses my eyesight is 803,496:20. Which means what you can see from 803,496 feet away, I have to be 20 feet from before I'll even notice it.

I can't find my glasses unless I have my glasses on.

"Wow, that's bad," you're thinking. But not bad enough, my friends. No, my four way astigmatism wasn't complicated enough for my health care provider. I'm sure you think you know where I'm going with this. Reading glasses, right? Oh, please. That would be too easy. Bifocals you say? Ha! I scoff at your lowly bifocals. My doctor wants to fix me up for trifocals.

Even better was his next suggestion. He suggested that I pay umpteen thousand dollars for lasik eye surgery, and THEN get bifocals to indulge the rest of my viewing issues.

Surgery, and I still come out of this looking like Grandma Walton. I'm not paying for elective surgery unless I'm coming out of it able to read the VIN number on his brand new Porsche from the roof of his building. I want Robocop Steve Austin nightvision laser cannon eyesight. I want to be able to simultaneously see the space trash we left on the moon with my left eye, while reading the fine print in magazine pharmaceutical ads with my right. In the dark. Blindfolded.

Trifocals, my *@&.