Monday, June 15, 2009

Where's my damn PARADE?


Where? I want to know!
There must be one. There SHOULD be one.
Today, without any ticker tape parade or banners or signs or balloons or fanfare or cake I got MULTIFOCAL contacts! How fricking old am I??????????
I tried. For almost a year, I tried to ignore that I couldn't see very well up close. I have been wearing glasses since the 5th grade. Couldn't that buy me an out of this whole reading glasses thing? Apparently not. Is there an appeals department? Who can I talk to about this?
I sucked it up and went in to the eye doctor to deal with this issue. It was no big deal to them.
My heart was pounding. Wouldn't that just perfect the scene...me clutching my chest as I drop to the floor with my multi focused eyes rolling in the back of my head.
Think I am being melodramatic? Then you are under 40.
I turned 40 with not only acceptance but with some degree of relish. We had a costume party where everyone came as their favorite magical creature or character. We had a grand time and I knew that I was coming into a time in my life that would be marked with a new independence. I am planning on swimming with the dolphins for my 50th. In case I don't take that birthday well, I can just keep swimming out to sea!
But this isn't independence. Hell, this is co-dependence. I am dependent on both distant AND up close up vision correction.
You can give me no line progressive lenses in my new funky frames. You can give me multi focal contacts that no one will detect. My talented sister can color my hair. But we can't change the fact that my time is marching on.
I don't really regret the passing of time. But there is more that I want to do. Like have my hair be naturally pigmented again and be able to see without a prescriptive lens. And skydive and go to Iceland and bike the Italian countryside and be crazy rich and just have a life that really takes my breath away.
I know that having multi focal lenses doesn't preclude those things but I am suddenly feeling like Indiana Jones in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. "I am too old for this shit."
No wait, that can't be right. I am too young, right?
Okay, maybe this is my pity party. As soon as I get used to my new lenses, then I will forget.
Well, at my age, I guess that is an inevitability.
At least I am a step closer to one of my most sacredly held life goals...to be eccentric.
There is that.

2 comments:

NorfolkBoy said...

Leslie, take it from someone who knows . . . you will ALWAYS be your age, it's an undisputable fact. Needing multifocals does not make you old, even if it makes you feel it.
Joy Happens remember? If you feel old you will be.
You often call me "old man", but to my dear friend of 90, I'm a youngster.

ellie said...

It felt weird that it felt like a transition and there was no acknowledgment of that. Just 'it's normal'. Nothing is normal if it is the first time we experience it.
Funny, I am going to enter an essay contest about when I knew that I was grown up. Multi focal lenses be damned, I am still not grown up! hehe