~Hate my progressive eyeglasses….

Hate my innovative eyeglasses….

“You kidding me – only THREE words?”

That’s the title and six words story for speed readers and busy writers. Let your imagination carry you away. See 2008 reviews on 5 women’s fiction novels.

Expounding…..eye strain and reading glasses.

UPDATED – The eyeglasses were returned and remade, not once but three times.  The final return now awaits a refund.  But my eyes stopped hurting and turning red.  Even a second prescription reading did not show that I needed any changes though.

But — this is all about the progressive eyeglasses.

Customer opinionated rant ahead.

Ever noticed a person reading and their head is loose? They wobble on their chair like reacting to quick-shooting sensations?

I thought it was a muscular disease. I have been there and back.  I empathized. But perhaps I am at the bottom of it. Stay with me now.

Three weeks ago I ordered new bifocals. They told me about a new-fangled reading glasses combo. Progressive mutli-focals. These have a bifocal definition on the bottom of the lens for the arm-length distance computer screen or store shelf. The half-lens above is for driving, watching birds, seeing individual snowflakes in the garden.

I loved both those focals, loved them.

Then it was time to read.

This is where the reading corridor is used, the tiny hourglass shape in the center of the entire lens.

I am an author. I read all day. Books. Computer screen a foot from my face with bifocals on to see clearly. Much eyestrain. A real neck cramp, but I do it. That is why I was excited about the new-fangled reading hourglass in the center of my new multifocal glasses. Just in time for the twenty book reading spree research before my next novel on Lindsay, Gooee, and Heather Laurel’s story behind Jesus and the Essenes. omgoodness! I was so happy.

Open book to read. There is no focus. All blurred.

What did they tell me? You gotta point your nose at what you want to see.

Hmmm…..

Fifteen minutes of pointing my nose like a Brittany spaniel and I figure it out.

I am able to see three words in large text. Five words in small text. All I can read at a time in new-fangled lenses. The rest is distorted, not just blurred. Distorted. Page is like a wave of paper if I don’t move my head. I say to me, these are good for reading with Amazon Kindle books or my ebooks for Blackberry. Not book books.

I call optometrist’s office. They again mention this might take a few weeks to adjust. I don’t have a few weeks. I am cramming. Well, come back tomorrow and maybe the lenses can be tilted.

I try all day to do it right anyway. Had been so excited, you know. Headaches, neck ache, nausea would fade with new glasses. Now I am tense. Neck pain. Now I walk like Johnny Dep on Pirates of the Caribbean. Feel drunk too. And carsick.

Tomorrow comes. Office manager explains that she is on her fifth pair of new-fangled before finding an improved, less distorted patent that works for her. She put me in THE ONE that works for her to spare me.

Me: I am not spared. Show me again what it is like to read in these things.

And she reads down the page of a book, head shaking all the way.

Me: So you are not kidding. I will only be able to read three words on one line at a time with these. I cannot rotate my eyes alone to read the line above or line below. I have to move my head up and down. And I have to move my head left and right to see the left of the line and the right. Reading a wide-page will be rocking fun. Whee, large print novels, fun!

She: Yes, that’s the way they are. Like we told you, they take getting used to. You have to point your nose at what you want to read.

Me: Point your nose at it! What that means to me is point your nose at the BOOK! Point your nose at the cereal box. Point your nose at the up-close computer monitor. Not the three words you want to read.

She: Point your nose at the words.

Me: I just want to be certain we aren’t missing something here. I will never be able to read more than three to five words on one line again without shaking my head side-to-side as I propel my head up and down over the page for as long as I shall live? Right?

She: Ninety-eight percent of our patients order the progressive lenses. They adjust and like them.

Me: That’s bull. No one likes this.

She: There are several manufacturers. These have been around twenty-five years. They are much improved.

Me: I cannot imagine. Some things are better off left unimproved and this was obviously one.

I further assured the office they needed to be more specific with their patients about what their noses needed to point at. Three words means three words. That no one wanted to live like this and I would not. That the 30-day return policy with no refund on the new-fangled lenses was not acceptable. That I wanted bifocals, so re-measure me anyway. Right, you read it right. My insurance company paid $145, I paid $105 for the new-fangled progressive-type multi-focals at a discount. But I sent them back for regular bifocals and will not be refunded. They are doing me a favor for giving me the thirty-day option to adjust and return. Their deception on an inadequate product, I pay. They? The techs, office manager, optometrist, lens manufacturers, and patent holders get paid. Do you want to guess where these patents were developed? I’m not saying it.

Now I ask you, the readers, oh, and the writers of books — we who have our head in words all the live long day. What do you suppose we will look like when we are ten or twenty years into this new-fangled phase of living in our new-fangled reading lenses? Our heads shaking loose on our necks whether we are reading or not. Our entire bodies with this swivel-bob motion. Going…. Uummmmm…… where is that word again? What line was I on? Like… like… well like wobbly elderly people who sometimes lose their stability and have earned that wobble. Only we will be thirty and fifty years old and wonder why.

Now the newer version – the multizone bifocal – is supposed to be superior, studies say.