Computer-o-Vision

For a  retired guy, I spend a lot of time at the computer.  During the school year I score SAT essays for the College Board, which is done online and lasts ten days each of the eight administrations.  That's a lot of looking at a screen. Of course, I do a lot of writing and editing on the computer, though I never play games.  Well, every once in a while, but it's an old school-style game like Ricochet. I don't have the coordination or the patience or the time to play anything more demanding.  But it's relaxing to blow up bricks sometimes.

My vision is typical for someone my age, i.e., I need reading glasses.  I have been using the ones from CVS, but my eye doctor, the amazing Elena Byrnes, recommended bi-focals for vision and eye protection.  Now you know if you wear reading glasses that they're intended for fairly close reading, say about 12 to 14 inches away. The computer screen is a little father away than that, as is handbell music, which I play.  So I either have to lean in or back up and let the distance portion of the glasses take care of it.

So, quite by accident, during a long spell of scoring essays, I found that I could sit at a comfortable distance from the screen and read it easily if I put on my reading glasses and the bifocals over them.  I look silly with two pairs of glasses on (call me six-eyes?) but it works well, as long as I remember to take one pair of glasses off when I go out. That has happened.

I thought Dr. Byrnes would get a kick out of my solution to reading the computer screen, and she said actually she could fit me with a lens that would allow me to read the screen with the same ease that I do with two pairs of glasses on. I call it Computer-o-Vision and I plan to get a pair of specs before the next scoring season starts.  I thought I had discovered something, but as with many other "discoveries" it had been out there all along.