Now you see it; now you don't (or When your arms just aren't long enough anymore)

Particularly in the mornings it was that I found my arms lacking in length for holding things to read in a plane of focus of my aging eyes.  And if I tried to achieve the objective by the reverse method (leave object in a fixed position and move my eyes (i.e. step back)), the writing would invariably get too small to decipher.

First panicky thoughts of BLINDNESS gave way to the realization that I just have reached that time in my life when I need reading glasses.

Just another one of those annoying pieces of evidence that we're not any more special than our parent's or grandparent's generations. You know, those things we thought would never happen to us when we were 18 :Having to push the pants down on the hips so they can close below the gut, abandoning the concept of a hair line and just being happy we still have some at all, etc etc.  And here is that big one:  Reading Glasses !  Only truly ancient people needed those when I was little. A little research in my family showed that 46 seems to be more or less the age in my family when we have to abandon claims of superiority because you just can't really uphold those if you can't even read what you wrote on the palm of your hand to cover up that the fact that your memory is going ;-)

Very Special Thanks have to go to Denise (The owner of Stephens Creek Guesthouse ; I was corrupted with chocolate banana bread to mention this here ;-), who not only let me use her reading glasses to have a look at some of my watches (which led to the realization that I REALLY REALLY needed them, because all of a sudden I could see again ;-), but also provided me with the very valuable piece of information that reading glasses can be found in a dollar store for about 10 bucks, so that I no longer had an excuse not to get any as in the days when I thought I'd have to shell out $500 for them at an optician's store.