Viking Lars | Saturday, 28 December 2019
I’ve had excellent vision all my life, always being able to see far, near, discern details and colours, excellent night vision and generally never needed any aid in seeing what I needed to see. From tying the tiniest of dry flies to seeing details on corroded, medieval coins to identify them.
Then - as I suppose it does for most, I noticed how I was able to see more details when I had better light. That happened in my early 40ies. It doesn’t really bother me, but I knew enough to know this was an early omen of troubles to come :-).
I was, and still am, able to read without glasses and thought that as long as I could that, I didn’t need readers - certainly not with the viking-ninja-vision I’ve always had.
Then one day, my youngest daughter claimed she had a splinter in her foot. I looked at where she pointed and concluded there was nothing. She kept complaining. Her mother had a look, and said there was something there. I looked again - concluded they were imagining things. My wife said: “Here, you old, stubborn man - put these one!” +1 readers? HAH… As if that would make any difference. Just to prove I still had viking-ninja-vision, I put them on - and there it was. A tiny, light-coloured splinter - clear as day and sharp as a razor before my eyes. I pulled the splinter and thought nothing more of it.
Until a few weeks later when I was tying midges - it was going alright (the PoD is actually a product of that very tying session). But at some point my wife passed and asked if I didn’t want to borrow her readers for tying those small flies now that I was having trouble seeing small things.
Long story short about my viking-ninja-vision and her reminding me of the splinter, I put them on - and those #20 midges were suddenly easier to tie than they have been for years.
I now have cheap readers every where - my desk at home and at work, my laptop bag, my fishing vests/packs and other strategic places.
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
Lars