This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

I get perhaps too much contact with my childhood / high school / college friends. Because I live where we grew up, I get visited a lot.

Moreso now that their parents are aging and dying. They come to to look after their parents (or, increasingly, bury their parents) and they call and want me to hang or go get a drink or play some music.

A reunion for me is unnecessary because I can barely get away from my school friends.

I love them and we have a lot of shared history, so I have a hard time saying no. Especially if it's someone who just flew into town for a few days. sometimes I am just not in the mood.

Most of us who could fled Pueblo, Colorado right after graduation.

I just spent a weekend in Vegas with one of my college buddies who's 23 days younger than me.

Had a good time, but at one point, leaning over a dinette table in his suite, I was all, "Man, we shoulda done this years ago when we were younger... like when we were in our 40s."

It is so strange to be hanging out with peers who are grandparents, older than many U.S. senators, with gray hair and baggy eyes.

Because I look in the mirror and see Young Indiana Jones wink and point at me. I definitely understand why there are so many old guys my age running around, acting like assholes. We haven't gotten the memo yet!

Know why middle-aged dudes wear their pants with their waists practically six inches above their belly button? It's because somehow our legs have shrunk, but we refuse to acknowledge this or buy new pants.

I am okay with looking middle-aged, and the prospect of grandparents, but the reaper's scythe hitting my peers' parents is bumming me out. I knew it would happen, of course. But it seems to be accelerating lately.

When my own personal parents were distracted, I was raised by a village. So those moms who were surrogate moms to the whole neighborhood were important in my upbringing, and we just lost another one yesterday.

Meanwhile my bio father (who is a major penis) appears to be immortal.

First of all, I am not looking forward to my parents dying.

But secondly, they're in their mid-70s. I go back and forth thinking, Are we going to wrap this up soon, or drag it out for another 15 years?

The waiting is worse on their part, sure, but whenever my step-dad's name makes a rare appearance on the Caller ID, I'm like is this going to be about Christmas or is it on?

Other than my Dad and younger sister (childless), I have almost no family outside of a few aunts (childless except for one cousin). My wife and I have no kids, so we are preparing ourselves for a fairly lonely life in the next ten years or so. We are pretty well suited for it I guess, but the thought can get to me a bit if I think about it directly.

Meanwhile my bio father (who is a major penis) appears to be immortal.

Man, am I familiar with this one. I guess being untouched by remorse, worry or even a thought for another person adds years to one's life.

After my Mom had a recent health issue that put her in the hospital, me and my siblings started really leaning on our parents to move to be close to one of us. They live in a rural/suburban area, pretty far from everything, and the closest one of us is a 5-6 hour drive away. It was just very clear during my Mom's illness that it's going to be harder for them to take care of themselves if there's no family close by. So after much hemming and hawing and a lot of resistance from my somewhat-in-denial 79-year-old Dad, they are apparently going to move to be close to me, possibly within the next 6 months. Now of course having advocated for this I'm coming to terms with what it's going to mean for me — a lot of work probably! — but also I'll get to see them a lot more and who knows how many years I have to spend time with them. They do drive me kind of crazy, and my Mom has mild cognitive impairment that could develop into something more acute, so I have no rosy glasses about any of it. Fortunately my wife is supportive, not least because her parents already live near us (like, 2 miles away).

So now we're going to have four parents between the ages of 75 and 79 all getting old right close to us. The next however many years should be interesting.

(Some crossover here with the Aging Parents thread, but that's a reality for any of us in our 50s who still have our parents.)

Meanwhile my bio father (who is a major penis) appears to be immortal.

Man, am I familiar with this one. I guess being untouched by remorse, worry or even a thought for another person adds years to one's life.

The Henry Kissinger Syndrome.

My parents have acres of land in the middle of BFE. I hope they move somewhere else while they are still functioning, because I have no idea what the fuck to do with a bunch of old tractors and ancient welding equipment and spools of barb wire and so much more.

IME, let an auction company sell it all for pennies on the dollar and take most of the pennies.

^ This solution has the virtue of having others haul the stuff away.

Thanks for that, jimbeaux.

I was talking to various siblings and nieblings recently (after maybe a bit too much mimosa) and I said the quiet part out loud. He's a dick and apparently he cannot die.

In a more decorous world, people might have blanched or been offended or changed the subject, but everybody was like, "yep."

Haha, yes, my siblings and I have had many moments like that. It's OK, we understand.

my insurance just texted me to let me know they're sending me something to poop in

so i've got that going for me

Not sure if I posted this before but I try to deal with aging by clowning my mother. Each time my brother (58) or I have a birthday (51), I always hit her with my jokey line ‘Your children are SO old. I can’t imagine how embarrassing that must be for you!’
But she just dryly replies ‘Yes, it really is.’

yr mom otm

My attitude is, Child, I've been clowning since I was in short pants. Bring your A game.

i'm going to get there in about 5 months yall

and i have a question which involves reading glasses

basically. reading glasses vs varifocals?

in the last year my near-field eyesight has gone to crap, so that i have to hold things far away from me to read them

however i only really notice it at night when i'm reading in bed - i have to use a lot more light than normal and i have to hold the book out from me a bit

are varifocals worth the cost? i'm sort of thinking they might be annoying, with all these different zones, and maybe it's better to just have normal glasses and a pair of cheap readers i can swap in

my experience of varifocals is that you adapt extremely quickly to the zones (like hours not days) and you also have a good excuse at certain moments for moving yr glasses down to the tip of yr nose like a judgy judge delivering remonstrance

my eyesight is a bit fvcked up at the moment but it's a consequence of POSTERIOR VITREOUS DETACHMENT (floating blurry blobs) and not at all my varifocals

I will also be here in about 5 months and also suspect that the next time I go to the opticians they'll recommend varifocals. Thanks for the advice.

I broke down and got glasses (for the first time!) with progressive lenses (which I assume is the American term for varifocals?) in 2020 based on advice after an eye exam. In the intervening years, I think I’ve worn them maybe 10 times? Unless I’m very tired, I feel like they actively impede my vision. I don’t know how much of this is me lying to myself about the clarity of my vision but I largely feel like it was an entirely unnecessary purchase.

so do you just not wear glasses otherwise?

I don't need glasses for distance or driving, but I very much do need them for reading and computer use.

A computer screen is a different distance from me than a book or phone (insert "I just need longer arms" joek here, hyuk hyuk).

And my eyes are different from each other, so magnification alone (like reading glasses from the drugstore)
doesn't work.

So yes, progressive lenses.

I went from some reading glasses to varifocals two years ago. Some pretty gross headaches drove it. Optician said your eyesight is still basically fine but has deteriorated enough that your brain is trying to maintain former levels and overworking eye muscles (paraphrasing there) - particularly for close-up stuff.

The period of adaptation was fine (a week, maybe) but for them to make any kind of sense, you do have to wear them all the time, otherwise, yeah, just get some reading glasses and accept that you're kicking the can down the road. I didn't find them that expensive fwiw - just get the eye test done at Specsavers and then go up Asdas with your prescription.

xp What YMP said.

(I'm only 13 months away from joining this thread properly. Hoo boy.)

so do you just not wear glasses otherwise?

Nope!

To be clear, I don’t expect to continue holding out like this forever, but I’m somewhat inclined to wait until it’s obviously better with my glasses on every time I put them on before I start wearing them all the time.

As a word nerd I love that the term for this is presbyopia.

The prefix is from the Greek for "old man" or "elder," like Presbyterian.

I never got used to having the zones, so I just lift my glasses up whenever I need to read with them on.

Yeah, I basically paid over the odds for varifocals but just wear them as slightly less effective distance glasses and put them on my head for reading.

thank you all for your varied experiences! i am going to buy some cheapo reading glasses and see how i get on

Yeah, I basically paid over the odds for varifocals but just wear them as slightly less effective distance glasses and put them on my head for reading.

this is exactly what i've done

I have one pair of glasses for seeing movie screens in sharp focus and another pair for reading. I tried progressives/varifocals but I didn't like them and they led to dangerous situations when I misjudged distances walking around the city. And I was never going to put in enough time to get used to them because between book-reading distance and movie-watching distance my eyesight is fine for all practical purposes.

I've had progressives for 6-7 years at least and in my experience adapted to them really quickly. The only place I don't need them is reading in bed.

i have been wearing glasses since i was ten (came home from top disney attraction THE ARISTOCATS and told my mum it was a grebt movie but strangely blurry) so this is likely a factor yes

I don't need glasses for distance or driving, but I very much do need them for reading and computer use.

I'm exactly the opposite. Don't need glasses to read or work on my laptop; need them to drive, see things farther away than across the room with any clarity, etc.

I got new glasses this year after not having had my prescription adjusted for about a hundred years, and when I put them on I felt like I could see all the way to the other side of the universe; it was amazing. Unfortunately, I took my road test for my driver's license about an hour after getting them and naturally failed. Went back a couple of months later, having adjusted to my super-vision, and passed.

I've been wearing glasses full time since I was eight, so hopefully will adjust to varifocals quickly.

very good vision to 16, then suddenly quite near-sighted.

i had laser distance correction around 40, it was amayyyyyzing for the kind of long, sweaty, active, outdoorsy shit i do. but now, mostly at night, shit's gotten blurry, enough that i use some glasses driving at night, i'm still ok during the day for mtb/nordic/trail-y stuff. still, better is better *eyeroll*

i'm told that for me, a re-grind involves no re-cut-- they just peel the first cut back and adjust, slap it closed again.

i feel completely insane for even thinking about this on the back side of my 50s.

The Costco three pack of cheaters (is that a common term?) is a great thing. Cheap and allows for leaving glasses in multiple locations. A car pair helps for restaurants, grocery can ingredient/lists, and other low light needs.

I use these foldable/retractable reading glasses that come in little cases, so handy! fortunately I have m/l the same farsightedness in both eyes so I just use 2.0 magnification

and yeah I have like 6 pairs scattered around between house and car

i wore no glasses at all till my 49th year. After my near eyesight went i had my eyes tested and nearly got talked into shelling out ££££ but thought I'd just try some £2 reading glasses (there's only .25 difference between my eyes) - they're fine. I still try and use them as little as possible, holding things at arms length and frowning in a classic old man way.

I struggle to read small print even with my prescription reading glasses on. I'm a few years overdue for some new lens as specsavers keep informing me, but I'm too skint at the moment and thank god for e-ink.

I’ve worn glasses since my 20s for distance vision, but in my 40s it got so I could no longer read through them. I was taking them off all the time to read, which was annoying. So I got multifocals, which have been fine. A little adjustment but pretty easy. But of course I was already accustomed to glasses.

Glasses wearing since, well, three or so. When the time came, my optometrist recommended just going the two-pair route and it works for me fine. Reading for computer/books, 'regular' glasses for TV/everyday things. Worked just fine for me since! Next eye exam is in fact in two days time.

all the cheap reading glasses in Poundland etc are +ve dioptres and probably only for people who had ok eyesight but now have trouble reading. if you've been short sighted your whole life then they probably won't help.

my glasses are fine for tv distance but newly terrible for computer distance and i don't need any at all for reading. had eyes tested in October and had a bad case of sticker shock when he priced up a pair (two pairs actually) of varifocals at 408 quid. he went straight to the hand crafted by ninjas lenses and added two lots of 80 quid for the coatings. the frames he chose for me were fugly too. i am making do and will look for more sensibly priced options soon.

I started wearing reading glasses?when I was 40 and started with the regular glasses at 51. I've had night vision problems for about a year.

One of my eyes is rubbish, it has astigmatism and never focuses properly no matter what lens is used with it - it has a longsighted lens, but I'm not convinced this helps in any way. My 'good' eye went shortsighted when I was about 15 so I've needed glasses / contact lenses since then (all the time). Just over the last couple of years or so, I've noticed that I'm struggling to read things, especially really small fonts. When I last saw the optician he said that was natural and would only get worse with time, but he also said varifocals would be borderline impossible because of the difference in prescription between the shortsighted eye and the longsighted eye. He talked about getting some glasses to wear over the contact lenses - at first, I assumed he meant to slip on if I needed to read something and take off immediately afterwards, but he actually seemed to be suggesting to wear them all the time over contact lenses, which seemed barking mad, as what would be the point of the contact lenses in that situation? Anyway, I got some kind of prescription, but it was many months later that I went back to try to get some reading glasses, and once I'd paid for them I found out they are only to be worn without contact lenses, i.e. I can switch between pairs of glasses when I need to read something. Given that I wear contact lenses most of the day, and given that when I'm just wearing glasses I'm highly unlikely to carry a second pair of glasses around with me, I've hardly ever worn them. They do make reading easier, but it's not a very practical solution, and I still have nothing to help with reading when I've got my contacts in.