During my last eye exam, the doc advised picking up a pair of readers. As in, non-prescription eyeglasses with just a bit of magnification to help with reading stuff relatively close by. I rolled my eyes a bit, but followed his advice anyway because it made good sense. (The eyerolling was because I have a strong “you’re not the boss of me” streak, not because I disbelieved his verdict.)
In fact I bought two pair: One regular off-the-shelf pair of 1.5x cheapo readers plus a moderately pricey pair of extremely lightweight “blue-blocker” readers (same magnification), ideal for helping make sure I can get to sleep not too long after reading stuff on my tablet before bedtime.
(As an aside: The age of the monocle is long past, yet we still refer to buying reading glasses in pairs, as if we might some day decide to only buy just the one eyeglass. Huh. It’s like the idea that someone would buy just one pant.)
Over the last month or so I’ve gone from using the readers only for actual-reading (like, e-books on my tablet) and looking at stuff on my phone (because some apps use very tiny fonts, am I right?) to wearing them pretty much any time I’m reading text on any screen, including the monster 4K displays attached to my desktop PC.
Just look at what getting old entails, y’all. And now I fully understand why people buy bifocals, after donning and doffing my readers five times in the span of ten minutes this morning as I got set up for work.
(No, bifocals wouldn’t actually help me in my particular environment. But I get it now.)