Me and the new peepers went for a short drive today. Sans specs. Haven’t done that for almost 50 years. Driving without glasses. Weird. Amazing. Skydiving without a chute. Instead, wings.

I had to take a couple of packages up to the UPS store and all the way up there I kept wondering what would happen if a cop stopped me. There’s an eyeglasses restriction on my driver’s license and I was driving without. Reckless! Unless you count the highly fashionable “fits over” shades I was wearing. (And by the way, they don’t fit that great without specs underneath.)

Then I went to Walgreen’s and picked out some cheap reading glasses. Two pairs, with the magnifications suggested by the doctor’s office for reading and computer. I’m still trying to figure out which is best, and when. With one I can easily read really tiny print. With the other, the computer screen looks a little better, but not by much. Makes me wonder how the experts will decide what prescription to give me a couple of months from now.

And yes, I expect to have full glasses again before this little adventure is over. The distance vision is likely to need a little tweaking and, unless I fall madly in love with the idea of reading glasses, I want to be rid of them. I’ve spent most of my life trying not to have glasses hanging off the end of my nose. I’ve fine-tuned the unconscious habit of pushing them up with a finger to the bridge. And I’ve perfected the unconscious habit of tipping my head back slightly to look out of glasses that have, inevitably, slipped down. Now, with reading glasses on, I have to do just the opposite — tip or keep my head down slightly to look at the TV.

Tipping my head up and down, pushing the glasses up or pulling them down. One pair or other. I’ll get the hang of it eventually. But right now, watching TV with the laptop in front of me, I’m getting whiplash. That’s one risk nobody warned me about.

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