Columnist Susan Snyder: Bifocals creating a spectacle

Friday, April 30, 2004 | 8:35 a.m.

In the beginning it was hard.

There was walking and talking. There was reading, writing and long division.

Then God said, "Let there be clothes and boys," and there were many changes of clothes and boys.

And Girl saw that it was good. Sometimes fabulous.

Girl became Woman, and Woman entered middle age. Boys became Men, and Woman found one was quite enough as long as he had power tools and his own iron.

There were still many changes of clothes, but they were good, for God had given her elastic.

Gravity gave her a sense of humor, and she discovered that wrinkles and saggy spots looked fine as long as everything underneath still worked.

And life was good.

Finally.

So God gave her bifocals.

The Old Poop.

Just when you not only know where it's at, but also know why you keep it and might even pay it off soon, the old peepers go south.

I am convinced that the guy who invented bifocals tested his technology by designing the mirrored walls and uneven floors in carnival fun houses.

Tell someone who already wears bifocals that you are adjusting to your first pair, and they toss back their heads and just laaaaaaaaugh.

Learning to walk is much harder when you are farther away from the floor. So far, I have run into two doorways, tripped over the edge of a co-worker's desk and body-slammed the librarian as I emerged from the ladies' room.

We will not discuss the three flights of stairs up to the newsroom.

"Now, don't turn your head too fast," Joel Adler, my optometrist, warned. "Just look for the line."

I can see the line. It's the stuff above and below it that's screwy.

So, faced with the frustrations of another of life's firsts, I did what any normal human being does.

I told my mommy.

"I was your age when I got my first pair of bifocals -- with the same instructions the doctor gave you about wearing them," she wrote in an e-mail last week. "Your father complained so about my getting repeat prescriptions filled because for the most part I wore them on top of my head, and they would fall off and get stepped on. Once, I drove over them."

He finally made her use a pair of old black rubber frames he'd discarded that would stretch to fit any head if soaked in water. (I assume she meant they soaked the frames in water.)

It was during this adjustment period that Mom was leader of my Brownie Scout troop. While other Brownies learned about pressing leaves between sheets of waxed paper, we learned about bifocals.

One day, we were sitting on the floor in a semi-circle around her chair. Whenever she spoke to one of us or read something to us, she'd toss back her head and glare at us through the bottom of her glasses.

And we were afraid. So she asked whether other grown-ups had looked at us that way.

"They all had tales of teachers, loved ones, strangers seeming to look upset with them," Mom recalled. "I wasn't prepared for the response but jumped right in and tried to explain that no one was angry or critical of them. They were just trying to see."

Blessed are they who wear bifocals.

And cursed are those who venture into their paths.