CSotD: Can I watch “Logan’s Run” on this gizmo?
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I hadn't really thought about this issue until Tak Bui brought it up today on PC and Pixel.
Opticians use the term "tromboning" to describe a person moving their reading material back and forth, looking for the point at which their aging eyes will focus on it. And the older I get, the more tromboning I do.
The term "near-sighted" has always fit me well, because my near sight is quite good, or, at least, it was for the first 40 years or so.
I got my first pair of bifocals after buying a rowing shell and discovering that I couldn't use the little rearview mirror that clips on your glasses frame or the brim of your cap so you can see where you're going because, with glasses, I couldn't focus on the mirror and, without my glasses, I couldn't focus on the image.
The bifocals didn't help. Of course, the biggest problem with the rowing shell was that it was too long to keep in the bedroom and it didn't make sense to go all the way out to the garage at night to throw my clothes over it. But I might have used it more often if I could see where I was going.
Though the fact that Lake Champlain is 125 miles long and a quarter of a mile wide suggests that, if I'd had any real dedication, it wouldn't have mattered where I was going most of the time. Keep it headed north-and-south and you're probably gonna tire out before you run aground.
Anyway, I still take my glasses off to read, but, yeah, I have to do a little tromboning to get the distance right, and working on the computer involves putting the glasses on and then taking them off and then putting them on again. (I could get a pair of mid-range glasses for computer work, but I spent all the money on a damn rowing shell.)
The real problem comes with things like OTC medicines where the little tiny instructions on the little tiny bottle are such that, by the time you reach a distance where the little tiny bottle is in focus, it's too far away to be able to read the little tiny letters.
I haven't made the leap to a SmartPhone yet, though I'm sort of through the geezer phase of not wanting to be connected when I'm out walking the dog. I learned from my cell phone that having the power to be connected does not necessitate being an idiot.
(I was behind a guy at Subway the other day who was talking on his SmartPhone but also wearing some kind of a headset with which I guess he talks on the phone while he drives. He looked like a cyborg.)
The numbers on my cellphone, and the letters in my contact list, are large enough that I can use the phone without taking off my glasses, but I do have to pop them up on my forehead in order to text. And the times someone has held out their phone and said, "See?" I have had to pop up my glasses to do so.
Which makes me think that:
A. I don't have to worry about becoming addicted to a SmartPhone because I'll only be able to comfortably use it for a few moments at a time.
B. Maybe iPads are just SmartPhones for geezers, like the "running shoes" that are actually "mall-shuffling shoes." Just watch — a couple more years, you're gonna have old people running into things because they're staring down at the iPads propped up on their walkers.
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