Making a Spectacle of Myself

Having been a parent, teacher, sometime coach, and now being a doddering grandfather, I should be used to making a spectacle of myself. But I have now ascended to new heights of spectacle-ness. Or should I say descended to new depths? I'll let you be the judge.

Nighttime reading, especially in bed when I read orally to Cuppa is always problematic. My nearest light is not quite near enough and not quite bright enough. Having made my problem known to my nears and dears, for some recent Father's Day or birthday, Thesha gifted me with a lighting device, but it hasn't been a great solution. I have to hold it over the page whilst holding the book, and even if I manage to keep the two aligned, much to my chagrin, I am confronted with the reality that not all books are the same or right size; it really only works for standard size paperbacks. Compounding the above problems is the caveat that I can't use it in complete darkness either; no, I quickly found that I must have some ambient light, or else weird patches of dark and light fall across my page, which is only okay if one doesn't mind missing every second sentence. I know, my life is difficult.

However, yesterday, after having been dragooned into an afternoon of shopping excitement in far flung places, I was totally chuffed to come across the lighted readers pictured above at Mark's Work Wearhouse whilst Cuppa amused herself to no end by trying on outfit after endless outfit. These are actually corrective lenses too. I took the mildest correction of 1.50 because that's all I require if not more. In point of fact, I can get read quite well without any correction at all, but I can deal with this negligible amount and even improve my vision to a modest extent. If you check the Panther Vision site, you'll discover that they have various lighted accessories including ball caps. Just look to your right if you deign to doubt my veracity.

I gave them a pretty good workout last evening, trying them in both the dimly lit sunporch and later in bed. They cast a pretty fair light and also give me a little magnification. I'm used to looking a little offbeat, but they're not as weird as the miner's helmet that I was contemplating. That lighted ball cap was and still is tempting though.