The Fine Print

The other day, while I was researching on the internet, I came across a CBC News article aimed at kids. You will never guess what I immediately noticed. It was in giant print. The stuff for adults is in normal print, but for the kids—the ones with the good eyesight—the text is in a huge font.

And here I am, at my advanced age—I am the one who could use the giant print.

Did they ever really think this through? Is it supposed to be cute for the kids? Or are kids thought to be so slow on the uptake that everything for them should be exaggerated? LOOK, LOOK, SEE SPOT RUN! Like that. Especially considering that the kids reading this information are already making their way through normal-sized print on every website. I don’t see four-year-olds reading the CBC News website. So, in my view, they are patronizing young people aged seven or eight or more, when they should be patronizing me with larger print.

It is so embarrassing to be the one in the library, or the bookstore, peering over my glasses to read titles, or tilting my head back at a ridiculous angle to read through that little strip of reading glass across the bottom of my spectacles, or wrenching the darn glasses off and getting a close-up look.

My mom, at age 100-plus, would not let me get her the large-print books at the library because those were for old people. She wouldn’t be caught dead reading a large-print book. She cared about appearances.

Why is it that these alterations in our faculties as we get older—okay, all for the worse—feel embarrassing? Why can’t we feel proud, or at least simply amused, that we can’t see very well anymore, or hear much of what anyone says, and certainly can’t run up the stairs two at a time? Why is it a decline instead of admirable maturity?

Just yesterday I was tired after a fairly normal day—a day that wouldn’t have tired me in the past. Is this my new normal? Tired for practically no good reason? I don’t know if I like this.

I can just see where this is going. My “morning energy” is going to dwindle from the hours between breakfast and lunch to, maybe, the hour after breakfast. I will just be able to do one thing a day. One thing! And the rest of the time will be used up playing spider solitaire on the computer. If I spend one good hour, out of my 16 waking hours, accomplishing something—plus, say, two hours for making meals, eating meals, showering, making the bed—that will leave 13 hours of spider solitaire.

Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. I could do that. I already play spider solitaire a lot to procrastinate and avoid getting ahead of myself. But as I get older, this won’t be shamefully wasting time—it will be, of necessity, passing time in an enjoyable fugue state.

I will have arrived.