The Archer becomes an Old Coot

So I finally had to get a real pair of eye glasses. I had some cheap drugstore glasses a while back, but I hardly ever wore them. In fact, I went out of my way to avoid wearing them. I came up with a plethora of excuses not to wear my first pair: you get those whelps on the bridge of your nose, the dog piddled on them, they were hijacked and held ransom by Canadian Separtists, eh?, it was after midnight and they turned into a pumpkin, the police confiscated them to use in a bathroom sting operation with a certain ex-US Senator (I've tried hard to resist making a crack about that, but I can't resist such good material), Mr. Tumnus stole them when I was in Narnia (The book says he wore specs, but I never saw any eyeglass factories in the movie. He either stole them from the Sons of Adam, or Narnia outsourced eyeglass making to the Lone Islands), and (my personal favorite) my roommate lost them in his martini glass at which point they dissolved. (Hey, it was a very dry martini!)

I was out playing a little game of football with some kids at church prior to my going to the eye doctor. I could tell my peripheral vision wasn't quite was it was when I was playing college football. I went to the eye doctor a few weeks ago and told me it was time to "be a grown up."

This is the first prescription pair I have had to wear. I have the beginnings of an astigmatism, which I think sounds like some obscure tropical disease similar to the rare Hawaiian malady suffered by many a poor seminarian/grad student called Ain'tgotnoMoolah. I knew that condition was coming for a while. My grandfather, of whom I am basically a clone, has an astigmatism too. And basically everyone in my family has to starts wearing glasses when they hit the big 3-0 or earlier. My mother's youngest sister has always had to wear them, so I guess I am lucky. I still basically just need them for stuff really far away and really up close technical stuff (like facebooking!).

I don't have quite as much hair as I used to. Now I'm wearing glasses some. It just makes me feel like an old coot. Heretofore, I was simply a young coot. What's next? Water pills? Dentures? Or, pehaps most heinous thing of all: mailings from the AARP.

Now that's just scary.