MindSpinner

With apologies to Milton, no intentions of penning a sonnet, and only minimal blindness to complain of as opposed to the real thing, I would just like to take this opportunity to whine about how annoying it is to look back at a post and see that I’ve put an apostrophe before the “s” to form a plural, non-possessive noun.

I hate this appalling state of squintitude that comes with middle life.

My glasses often sit on the bedside table, not on my nose. I seldom put them on first thing in the morning, but read the news online without them instead, fighting to focus. I tell myself I’m exercising those middle-aged eye muscles so that they won’t become ever more stubbornly inefficient. They are becoming somewhat more stubbornly inefficient anyway, but I too am stubborn, spoiled by 40 years of 20-20 vision.

The words on the page begin as an impressionistic blur. In the meantime, reading has become a different experience, filled with moments of drama and wonder. I’ve begun to collect these.

Headlines shout “Killer tomatoes hit Tennessee.” For a split second, tomatoes the size of Volkswagons hail down upon the earth. I stare again with ferocious intensity: Tomatoes turn into tornadoes. I never thought there could be anything anticlimactic about a tornado, but there you have it.

A Google Ad touts listings for “Doctors and Medieval Jobs.” I picture my doctor standing before me with a jar full of leeches. Medieval. Medieval. Midlevel. Oh. But leeches are being used once more in modern medicine, a gruesomely fascinating practice, so I don’t quite discard the image. Moreover, though the actual tornadoes I read about hit Tennessee months and months ago, I can’t exorcise mental images of giant tomatoes pelting houses and cars and maybe occasionally a lackadaisical cow standing in a field.

Ten minutes or so into my exercise, I can see the small print on my laptop. It’s not perfectly clear, but it’s readable. (Fonts display smaller on Macs than they do on the PC you are likely staring at right now.) Proofreading remains a challenge in any case.

I know, I know. I could just wear those glasses all the time. (I do wear them often.) But then I’d really have no excuse.