I never understood the concept of my mother’s reading glasses. She would wear them while reading anything, but take them off to do anything as simple as looking at me when I came to tell her something really important like that my brother was hogging the bathroom. Lest you think that I was tattling about something unimportant, I would like to point out that I grew up with seven people in the house and only one bathroom. I would also like to point out that nobody ever wanted to follow my brother into the bathroom. Even with an open window and an industrial strength fan, it took a good fifteen minutes for that bathroom to be fit for human habitation. I’m just saying.

Anyhow, it made no sense to me that my mother couldn’t read without wearing those glasses, but she could see one of us stealing a cookie from fifty feet away. And if she didn’t happen to have her reading glasses handy, she had to hold the reading material at arms length to be able to read it. What was that about?

Then one day I realized that I was holding my book at – gulp – arms length. I pulled the book closer to me. Nope. Not happening.

I immediately made an appointment with the eye doctor. I had always enjoyed 20/20 vision, so clearly I had somehow contracted some sort of horrible eyesight-destroying disease! I was going blind, I tell you! Blind!

My eye doctor didn’t share my concern. According to her, I was just getting old and my eyesight was getting old right along with me. I’ve never cared for that woman.

So now I understand about Mom’s reading glasses. I can’t read without the glasses, but I can’t walk across the room with the glasses. I can see far away, but I can’t see close-up. Okay, so it still doesn’t make sense to me, but I can relate to it.

I have reading glasses on the dining room table. I have them next to the bed, a pair in each bathroom, a pair next to my computer, a pair in my purse … At this point, I might own more pairs of reading glasses than I own of pairs of shoes.

My 38-year-old boyfriend (my enviable status as a ‘cougar’ is the subject for another day) likes to brag about his 20/10 eyesight, and he thinks its ‘cute’ that I can’t even read a menu without my glasses. He just doesn’t understand why I don’t have more of a sense of humor about the subject.

Yesterday, I noticed that he was holding the newspaper just a little further away from his face than he usually does. Heh, heh, heh.