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Jerry Zezima: Seeing is believing

Jerry Zezima, Tribune News Service on

Published in Lifestyles

For a double-visionary like me, the daily dilemma is not whether I can’t find my eyeglasses, in which case I would need a pair in order to find them, but why I forgot to bring them upstairs so I can see well enough to write drivel like this.

Until a few months ago, the only glasses I needed were the kind that hold beer or wine. Then I discovered I was farsighted, not to the point of being able predict the winning Powerball numbers, but being unable to clearly see things that were up close, such as letters that appeared to be fruit flies, tiny Volkswagen Beetles or the symbols for chemicals like boron.

That made it difficult to read what I was writing, which may actually have improved it.

So I got a pair of “readers,” which are nonprescription glasses so cheap that the price won’t knock your eyes out.

My wife, Sue, has what she estimates are “90 pairs” of readers scattered around the house, though I would put the number at no more than six dozen.

While my readers enabled me to see much better when I was reading or writing, they presented two problems:

1. They turned out to be women’s glasses.

2. I would always forget to bring them upstairs (to write columns and delete emails urging me to buy eyeglasses) or downstairs (to read the comics and peruse bills that I would throw out anyway).

The first problem was discovered by my two adult daughters, who wear glasses themselves. They and their mother were sitting at the kitchen table as I was catching up on the latest sports scores.

I soon heard chuckling. I looked up and saw three blurry people because my readers were not meant for distance.

“What’s the matter?” I wondered.

“You’re wearing women’s glasses!” one of my daughters said.

“No, I’m not,” I insisted, explaining that I had gone to CVS and gotten my readers from the men’s stand.

“A woman who didn’t want them probably put them there by mistake,” my other daughter said.

I turned to Sue and asked, “Are they right?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, very likely because she was wearing the wrong glasses.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Who’s going to see them anyhow?”

But I began to worry about the second problem: I was risking cardiac arrest by constantly having to go up and down the stairs to fetch my glasses.

“I need more glasses,” I told Sue.

“Let’s go online,” she suggested.

 

I had to put on my readers to see the selections that appeared on the screen.

“Are these men’s glasses?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Sue. “See, it says so right here, next to the picture of a man wearing glasses.”

“They’re very fashionable,” I said.

“And you get a three-pack for only $19.99,” Sue pointed out.

“I’m worth every penny,” I said. “Let’s order them.”

The glasses arrived two days later. I opened the box and tried on a pair.

“What do you think?” I asked Sue.

She had to take off her reading glasses and put on a pair for distance to see my new readers.

“They look really nice!” she said approvingly. “Can you see better?”

I looked at my phone and said, “Perfectly.”

“Where are you going to put them?” Sue wondered.

“I’ll put a pair in the kitchen and one upstairs in my office,” I said.

“What about the third pair?” she asked.

“Maybe I’ll put them in the bathroom,” I said. “It’s where I do some of my best reading.”

“And they’re men’s glasses,” Sue pointed out.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a vision in them.”

Sue rolled her bespectacled eyes.

“You have to admit,” I said, “these new glasses really give me specs appeal.”


©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

 

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