Bifocals Require Reflection On Vision Priorities

Bifocals are an amazing innovation in eyeglasses; they make everything, no matter how near or how far, appear blurry.

So if I squint at you, please don’t take it wrong. I am merely trying to discern whether you are a person or a topiary shrub.

Actually, I don’t squint so much as bob my head up and down. One thing I’ve discovered is that I have to maneuver my head around a lot in order to see what I’m looking at. I feel like one of those head-on-a-spring car ornaments.

This all began when my eye doctor suggested I had finally reached the age of bifocals. With my regular old glasses, I could no longer focus well on objects right under my nose. Obviously this called for urgent action. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life seeing nothing but a blurry mess where my nose should be.

Only now, after wearing these bifocals for about a month, do I realize that there are very few things right under my nose that I really want, or need, to focus on.

Do I really need to focus on my pillow when I’m laying on it? Do I really need a good, sharp look at my Grape Nuts as I lift them into my mouth?

So now I’ve got bifocals whether I need them or not. I decided to get the non-lined kind because they provide a smooth transition from the “close” correction to the “distance” correction, and also I didn’t want to look like every high school math teacher I have ever known.

When I first put them on, I was a bit disoriented. My perspective was altered, as if I were looking through a pair of Cracker Jack magnifying glasses. In fact, my depth perception was so scrambled that I was even having trouble negotiating stairs until I discovered to my relief that I wasn’t even on any stairs.

Now that I have worn them for a while, I have become used to them. Whenever I want to see something at a distance, I have learned to look through the upper part of my glasses. Unfortunately, it is the upper-quarter inch, so I have to point my nose down, lift my eyebrows and give what amounts to a quizzical look at the world. This is not usually a problem, except when I’m driving. People who have watched me driving lately tell me that I appear to be looking at my feet and brooding.

The middle distance is a bit more of a problem, an especially significant problem since “middle distance” covers virtually everything from six inches away to the horizon. I do most of my work at a computer screen, which is normally about two feet away. No amount of head bobbing seems to be able to bring the computer screen into exactly the correct focus. And then, once my eyes adjust to the screen, I glance down at the keyboard and it looks like oatmeal. It’s a good thing I have the keyboard mostly memorized, because I refuse to bob my head up and down just to get a “y” in focus.

For me, however, reading a book presents the most severe problem. The whole idea of bifocals is to make up-close reading easier. However, I have always preferred to read books at arm’s length, on the theory that I could devour more words at a glance that way.

So now, I am finding it almost impossible to read in bed. I have to peer through the tops of the lenses, like I do when I’m driving. However, while prone in bed I can’t get my chin down far enough to look through the tops of the lenses. I can only push my chin down so far before I threaten to crack my sternum. Thus the top half of every page is in focus, but the bottom half is mush. The only solution I’ve found so far is to hold the book two feet in the air, which means I will never be able to read “War and Peace” unless I tone up my upper arms.

I am pleased to report, however, that with my new bifocals, I can see any object six inches from my nose excruciatingly well. Just to make these stupid bifocals worthwhile, I’m thinking of finding a needle today and threading it.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review