The Daily Eye-test

 

Image by upklyak on Freepik

I am sure many of us are shortsighted enough to remember the good old eye-testing charts beginning with a large E and ending with an indecipherable string of letters which apparently no one but Superman can read. Well, that happens to me every morning but with a few bells and whistles thrown in. Let me explain.

The Eyetest Equipment: The daily newspaper. In my case, The Telegraph.

The Day: Everyday except when the powers-that-be declare a string of holidays as in the recently concluded Pujas.

The Place: My favourite place is the "Library" which some people call the Necessarium or the plebs call the Bogs. For one thing, there's no fan and pages don't fly. For another, some of the news is so frightening is scares the crap out of you.

The Story

So, just like the eye-test, they soften you up by giving you a few large advertisements in the first four or four and a half pages.  Easy on the eye - some of the pin-up girls in jewellery are even easier - and all are quick page turners.  Exactly as the first 3 lines of the eye-chart E - F P - T O Z.  Then on page 4 and a half and another half (I just hate that vertical half page), one finds page one with large font headlines which are still easy enough to read with your elbows resting on your knees.  A few lifts to check out the smaller fonts and the infographics and you're educated.  No glasses needed yet. 

You cruise along with lines L P E D and perhaps the one following (which I need specs for, I admit). Flip the pages and suddenly there's this huge list of recruitment results or something in small type covering the next two pages.  Fortunately it's not something the doctor ordered so you can skip.  Only to be confronted by the Matrimonials with an occasional photo of an astrologer dude who can figure out the future! Again, fortunately, I am married and once might be just enough.  So I scroll on.

And then somewhere on the Business page you hit it.  The roadblock.  The line that ends it all. It's a little cartoon called (appropriately) BOTTOM LINERS.  I'm being kind to you .. I have expanded the image to about 3x the actual size in the newspaper.

So, this does exactly what the eye-test does.  It makes you struggle, cringe, feel a sense of inferiority and finally give up and bleat plaintively, "I can't read that".  Apologetic, sense of failure and impending doom as the doctor prescribes reading glasses -- a sure sign of advancing age.

But all is not lost.  If Bottom Liners looks interesting enough,  after the paperwork is done, I leap over to my desk and grab my family heirloom, my grandfather's well-preserved magnifying glass.  Even then, though, the print is so blurred that I just see what you see in a larger size! Printer's devil.

With a sigh I turn to the magazine section - smaller in size, glossy, easier to turn the first 15 advertisement pages. And I even negotiate the flip-up advertisement page in the middle which hides the content below.  I get to the funnies and reassure myself that I can still read ALL CAPS written by hand - Peanuts, BC, Luann, Hagar and Dennis.  All eminently decipherable without spectacles. 

Except on Sundays when I have to negotiate aliens with Spaceman Spiff alias Calvin (and Hobbes). But that is a fun ride! 

(Next blogpost is going to be on another magazine of yore to which I recently subscribed. Watch this space.  And please leave your comments so I know there are people reading.  Leslie)