My Turn: Glasses may be par for the course for Jim Lauter of Huntington

As I stood in the tee box at the first hole of the Stonebridge Golf Links & Country Club in Hauppauge, my eyes were drawn to the finely manicured fairway and its impressive tree-lined surroundings. The course was seasonally decorated by nature’s bountiful selection of colorful leaves of red and gold. I couldn’t help but be captivated by the landscape’s beauty, all compliments of the fall foliage.

But the objective at hand quickly returned to me. “We can hit after that twosome in front of us moves up a little farther,” I said to my golf partners, my brother, Mart, and our friend Steve.

“That’s not a twosome!” Steve immediately let me know. “That’s one man and his golf cart!”

Shocked, embarrassed and amused all at the same time, I confessed: “I guess it’s time for me to see the eye doctor.”

Perhaps denial of my eyesight difficulties have become a question of vanity. Was it 30 years already since, at 34, I had written an article about people like myself who, although “shortchanged” in the height department, still appeared to be younger than their actual age?

(My theory back then hinged on a young cashier “carding” me when I bought a six-pack of beer. The teenager inspected the license, which gives 1959 as my birth date, before looking back at me, obviously embarrassed and turning various shades of red. “Sorry!” she said sheepishly.)

Perhaps my vanity has had the upper hand for too long now. I’m turning 64, and the words of a favorite Beatles song keep ringing in my head: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty four?”

My effort to delay becoming a bespectacled senior was based on the fear that a change might set off a chain reaction of age-related maladies. What would be next? Paying closer attention to those ads on television to improve my hearing?

The same day that I made my “fairway faux pas,” I later enjoyed dinner with Steve, his wife, Eileen, my brother Mart and sister-in-law Sue. Each admitted being in need of eyeglasses to read the dinner menu.

Eileen commented: “Don’t you need glasses, Jim, or are you just fooling us?”

I explained that I had astigmatism dating to my childhood, in which my right eye could read the fine print, while my left eye would do the work for distance. Apparently now, the left one has become my lazy eye.

Has reality finally set in? I think it’s time to follow through on improving my vision before things get worse.

You know what they say: “Pride comes before the fall.”

Perhaps, in my case, the pride lasted well into the fall.

 Jim Lauter

 Huntington