If you ever want to feel truly humbled by the passage of time, try putting in a pair of prescription contact lenses just so you can slap a pair of drugstore reading glasses right on top of them.
I used to think contacts were the ultimate freedom. Pop them in, and boom—HD vision for the whole world. Now? Putting in my contacts just means I can see the street signs on my commute, while my own phone screen turns into a watercolor painting. To read a text message or look at my laptop, I have to perch a pair of readers on the bridge of my nose like a Victorian librarian who also happens to have 20/20 distance vision.
It feels completely unhinged. I am literally paying for plastic lenses to sit on my eyeballs so I can see far away, only to put another set of plastic lenses in front of my face so I can see six inches in front of me. At this point, my eyes are basically a nesting doll of optical corrections.
The real comedy show, however, starts at 9:00 PM.
The second I peel those contacts out of my eyes for the night, a miracle happens. Suddenly, I have bionic, eagle-eyed macro vision. I can read the microscopic ingredients on a chapstick tube in dim lighting. My phone screen is razor-sharp. I feel young again!
...Until I glance up at the television across the room, and the news anchor looks like a blurry thumbprint.
So, what do I do? I reach for my normal glasses so I can watch TV. Then my phone buzzes. Because I'm wearing my distance glasses, my phone is blurry again. Now I’m doing the classic middle aged trombone maneuver, holding my phone at full arm's length, squinting aggressively, and eventually sliding my glasses down to the tip of my nose to peek over the frames.
Look at the daily math of my eyeballs:
• Daytime: Contacts in (can see trees, cannot see laptop) + Readers on (can see laptop, trees are now a hazy fever dream).
• Nighttime: Contacts out (can see phone, cannot see TV) + Regular glasses on (can see TV, phone is now unreadable).
There is no winning. Every single day is a high stakes game of optical musical chairs, and the music never stops.
People tell me getting older is about gaining wisdom, patience, and perspective. Nobody warned me that "gaining perspective" actually just means constantly adjusting the physical distance between my face and whatever I'm trying to look at. Excuse me while I go look for the reading glasses I left on top of my head.
