July 1996 – Sincerely Sire Newsletter
The Fourteen Point System
In honor of all baby boomers, who are now unable to read
standard size print, I believe congress should pass a bill that requires all TV
guides, newspapers, bank deposit slips, restaurant menus, books, nutritional
facts, and instructions of any kind
to be printed in a minimum of 14 point type like I’m writing this column. This should be done because I’m mad as heck,
and I’m not going to take it anymore. I mean half the country can’t read 12 point type, or
even worse, 10 point type without glasses anymore, so why shouldn’t the entire
nation just switch over to the 14 point system.
All of us boomers, 40-years-old and up, could take our Savon
reading glasses and drive our Toyota Camrys right over them. They talk about smokers’ rights, and
non-smokers’ rights, well I submit to you, what about half-blind-baby-boomers’
rights?!
Yes, I say, we have the right to be able to read TV guides,
restaurant menus, bank deposit slips, the nutritional facts on the side of a
candy bar wrapper, and the very important surgeon general’s warning - without
glasses! At the very least, reading
glasses ought to be available to the public every few miles, like freeway call
boxes. Yeah, that’s it, they could put them inside
the call boxes! They should also be
available on all airplanes. I forgot my
glasses on a recent airline flight and wasn’t even able to read the emergency
manual. Luckily I had a window seat though,
so I was able to occupy myself by reading car license plates for the duration
of the flight.
My first pair of glasses were purchased at the optometrist’s
office on April 8, 1993 when I was 43 years old. I bought three pair. One for downstairs, one for upstairs and one
for the office. I used the pair for
downstairs, that night, to read the TV guide, and I used the pair for upstairs
to read a book before I went to sleep, but I never got to use the pair at the office
because by the time I got there, the next morning, I needed a stronger
prescription. I complained about this to
my friend, Mark, who is also a half-blind-baby-boomer, and he told me he bought
all his reading glasses at Savon.
Excellent tip. That’s where my wife and I have been buying ours ever
since.
We both started at the rookie level of 1.25. Rosemarie is now up to 2.00, while I have
been holding steady for the last couple of months at 1.75. The only problem
with the Savon glasses is that we’ve got too many of them now because we never
throw them away. We do, however, lose
them frequently, but then, inexplicably, they reappear a few months, or even a
few years later. Like there’s a glass
fairy or something. “Hey, honey, here’s
a pair of one-two-fives. I thought these babies were gone for good. The glass fairy must have been here again
last night.”
So now, the one-two-fives, and the one-five-zeros and the
one-seven-fives and the two-zero-zeros and our original prescription glasses
are all mixed in together. We must have
a couple hundred pairs of glasses around here.
I know I’ve picked up a pair that’s too strong when I find
myself meticulously examining the craters in the paper I’m reading. The power level printed on the inside of
eyeglass frames is way to small to read. The only way to know what power you’re
wearing is to try a pair on and stagger around for a while.
If they’d just go to the 14 point system we wouldn’t have
these annoying problems anymore. And
with the money we saved on glasses we could buy an Ab-Roller. So please, 14 point your half-blind
congressman today. I’m tired of being
framed. Aren’t you?