A Visit To The Eye Doctor

I took my 84 year old father in law to the eye doctor. 

He wasn’t looking forward to it.  He began reading all the license plates of the cars in front of us and the make and model and where the car was bought.

I wondered why he was doing this.  It’s not like he had to prove anything to me or that the doctor was going to ask me how his vision was.

My father in law has glaucoma, cataracts and macular degeneration. 

The doctor says it comes with age.  There isn’t anything he can do about the macular degeneration and the cataract is not bad enough to operate.  With the glaucoma, he said to just keep using the drops and see you in six months.

On the way home, more license plate reading.

And then he mentioned how his grandma and grandpa used to fight over the magnifying glass to read the paper.

It got me thinking about the history of eyeglasses.  Wikipedia says they go back to around 1286 in Italy.  It also says that Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocals.

Knowing what I pay today for eyeglasses you have to believe back then the cost just made it impossible to afford and there must have been a lot of, “blind as a bat” people.

Saving grace back then is they rode horses.  Lots of open space. No worries of crashing.

Then again they also carried guns.

Maybe that is where the phrase, “couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn came from”!