Reading Glasses and Butter Compartments

I’ve worn glasses since the fifth grade. The nearsightedness became steadily worse through my college years, until an ophthalmologist prescribed “hard” contact lenses to arrest the elongation of the eyeball that is the most common cause of myopia. All has been well for the past twenty years but now the loss of flexibility in the eye is causing me to lose the ability to engage in close work with the contacts on. I am guessing at the letters in the newspaper or on the computer screen. So I just bought some reading glasses to offset, partially, the corrective power of the contact lenses.

Our refrigerator does a fine job of keeping our food cold, but at that temperature the butter is rock hard. We put the butter in its own compartment, where it is not as cold as the rest of the refrigerator, and the butter becomes easier to spread.

We have gadgets that do their jobs too well, so we need to invent more machines to offset the effects of the first. On my way to work each morning, I am transported in turn by car, train, bus, escalator and elevator. Because I don't break a sweat I need to use other machines so that my muscles will get a modicum of exercise.

Never satisfied, we endlessly calibrate and perfect our machines. The human condition: reading glasses and butter compartments.


The Caltrain station at 4th and King, SF, in the early evening . © 2004 Stephen Yuen