I Can See Clearly Now

"I like that I get to grow old with you." - My wife, comforting me as I was coming to grips with the fact that I need glasses.

I'm getting old.

For the first time in my life, I'm saying that, and I truly feel it. I believe it. Reality has finally set in.

Why?

Because I now need glasses. I now have glasses. I now wear glasses. You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?

The Peanut will see me in pictures from the points in her life up until now, and say "Look at how long ago this was. Dad didn't even have his glasses yet." Long ago, I resigned myself to the fact that she'll say "Look at how much hair dad used to have." For some reason my hair loss doesn't make me feel old. But the glasses do. Maybe because I've been losing hair since college.

I understand that a lot of people start wearing eyeglasses when they're children. But that's genetics. For the first time, my age is causing a problem. A breakdown. A disability, if you will. Most recently, you might as well call me Grandpa when I was driving at night. Do you know how many turns I've missed because I couldn't read the street signs in time? Yes, a sign of the times indeed. A car ride with me behind the wheel had more twists and turns than The DaVinci Code.

I thought I was in my prime. What happened to my prime? I still feel "primey." Don't I look primey?

It all started one football Sunday when I was sitting in my chair in the back of the den, and I couldn't read the scores and stats that scroll at the bottom of the screen. I grew angry thinking there was something wrong with the large television hanging on the wall. Nope. Picture perfect. Operator error.

Perhaps I am overreacting. There are people who have more serious problems - health and otherwise - than I have.

We were filling the prescription, and Peanut thought nothing of it. When I was trying on frames, she said, "Daddy glasses" and countinued to run around the store like a chicken trying to avoid capture by a hungry farmer. I guess she's used to it since my wife wears them. My wife isn't getting old, though. She's been wearing glasses since childhood. Simply put, the woman is one step above a bat on the blindness scale. Once again, genetics. I, on the other hand, require glasses to see anything past the length of my arm because of my glacially advancing age.

But my daughter took it in stride. She's growing up, which inevitably means I'm growing old. No big deal, she seems to think. That's life. Enjoy it while it lasts. I've seen a lot up until now. Now I will watch my daughter grow up... through corrective lenses.

Leave it to a two year-old to open my eyes and allow me to see what really matters.