Peekaboo, I Almost See You!

Posted by: West Georgia Eye Care Center in Frontpage Article on January 17, 2022

Peekaboo is not only a timeless game used to entertain infants and toddlers; it is also the title to a witty piece of poetry that bemoans the need for reading glasses.  Presbyopia is the natural aging change that causes difficulty with near focusing and the need for reading glasses, bifocals, multifocals or progressives.  The change typically occurs in the early to mid-40s and is an unavoidable, human, aging condition.

“Cheater-readers” is a nick name for the inexpensive, over-the-counter type of near vision correction.  The name is just the type of rhyme that Ogden Nash would appreciate, although he is not credited with it.  He is, however, the author of over 500 rhymed works including, Peekaboo, I Almost See You!  On January 1, 2022, the poetry of Ogden Nash entered the public domain and became shareable with a new generation of readers.  His rendering, filled with his unique, self-created vocabulary, makes light of eyes that are growing older…

Peekaboo, I Almost See You

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,

But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm isn’t long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,

And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,

And of all your friends he is the joculist,

So over his facetiousness let us skim,

Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said good evening to his grandfather clock under the impression that it was him,

And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLE QWERTYOP and you say Well, why SHRDNTLY QWERTOYOP? And he says one set of glasses won’t do.

You need two.

One for reading Erle Stanley Garner’s Perry Mason and Keats’s “Endymion” with,

And the other for walking around without saying Hello to strange wymion with.

So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,

And then you can’t find your seeing glasses again because without them on you can’t see where they are.

Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an ox,

I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.