"Choco Papa`s Health Note"

  The Day the Menu Disappeared I remember the exact moment. I was sitting at a restaurant with colleagues — one of those work dinners that happened three or four times a week back then — and the waiter handed me the menu. I looked down and the letters were blurred. Not completely invisible, but soft around the edges, like someone had smeared vaseline across the page. I held it closer. Worse. I pushed it farther away, stretching my arm to its full length, and finally the words sharpened just enough to read. I ordered quickly, hoping nobody noticed. They noticed. "You need reading glasses," one of the younger guys said, laughing. He was thirty-five. He had no idea what was coming for him. I was fifty-three. And that dinner was the first time I admitted to myself that my eyes were changing. Not slowly, not gently — they had dropped off a cliff while I wasn't paying attention. Within six months, I had reading glasses in my jacket pocket, my car, my desk drawer, and ...