Reading glasses by the 4-pack ($8)

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I was puzzled by “normcore”, but apparently that’s a thing now. Although I’m confused; If I just dress normally without a conscious attempt at being “normcore”, am I normcore?

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The problem with cheap reading glasses is they tend to read at the 6th grade level.

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Dollar stores are a great place to get reading glasses too and are cheaper at, well, a dollar each.

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If I’ve learned anything from my friend who works at the Dollar Store, it’s not to ask how much stuff is. Specifically in the ones that have giant banners saying, “Everything is just $1.00!” She will page a manager for a price check just to fuck with you.

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As someone shortsighted, well, I’ll stick with spending several hundred bucks

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I’ve always wondered who these are marketed at… is it normal to have two eyes with the same prescription? If so, I jealous.

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Basically reading glasses are for people with more or less normal vision who are just having problems with small print as they get older, like my mom. But, yeah, as someone with “coke-bottle” lenses of differing strength myself, reading glasses aren’t for me either.

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IANAO but my understanding is that particularly with age-related vision problems, it’s pretty normal for degeneration to happen evenly with both eyes. I just had lasik and, at an age above 40, still need reading glasses of equal strength, even though the lasik did not (and apparently cannot) correct that aspect of my vision.

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Try Zenni Optical, the online glasses place. Seriously. If you send your prescription info, and pupillary distance stuff (which the optometrist/ophthalmologist can provide) glasses are about 1/10th the price. $300.00 pairs for $30.00, delivered in about a week. And so far, every pair we’ve ordered have been perfect, which I can’t say about Lens Crafters and the like over the years.

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I don’t know about the Dollar Store specifically, but in my experience with that kind of store the truth is often slightly more complicated. For example your dollar might get you several of some items. For other products you have to decide if the sacred rule that everything costs a dollar except when it doesn’t trumps the price indicated on the packaging in two-inch digits.

The reason is that the muscles inside your eye that reshape the lens to focus on different distances get weaker and can’t focus in as sharp on closer items. No amount of lasers reshaping the lens is going to fix that.

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That makes sense and explains why it’s more even than problems with the shape of the cornea. I knew that going in to the surgery and actually my main point was to avoid the use of bifocals.

As Waetherman (Good avatar choice, BTW) says, it’s pretty typical to need similar-strength reading-glass lenses for age-related presbyopia.

I have normal distance vision, and my optometrist-prescription computer reading glasses that I use for work are about a quarter to half a diopter different, with different astigmatism corrections, which is about the amount of pre-presbyopia difference between my eyes. Basic drugstore glasses are good enough most of the time, unless I’m going to be reading for a long time or doing fine detail work, so I keep them in the car, the kitchen, random places around the house. The kind of skinny $5 grampa glasses that come in a plastic tube are really convenient to keep in music bags, computer bags, luggage, etc., so I’ve always got them handy.

Back when my wife was wearing contact lenses for her distance vision, she’d use drugstore glasses over top of them for reading, and that was also close enough. These days she wears progressive lenses for distance, and just takes them off to read.

I do have a problem with these reading glasses, and with the dollar-store ones I’ve found, which is that the plastic frames are annoyingly thick, and the ones I’ve bought are easier to break than skinny metal-framed cheap glasses.

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