Visionary Vicissitude

Source: Michael Ballanger for Streetwise Reports 01/13/2020

Sector expert Michael Ballanger offers his insights into the precious metals markets as 2020 begins.

It was one of those days that all sexagenarians loathe; you have to go to the doctor, and whether it’s the GP (general practitioner) or the dentist or the proctologist, nothing reminds you more rapidly of your advancing age than going to the optometrist.

Now, many of you would say that your annual prostate exam or a root canal or bloodwork would be the dreaded of all medical dreads, but for me, it is having the 50-something eye lady remind me that two years ago (when I last mustered up the courage to see her), my long vision was great and my reading vision required only 150-magnification “cheaters.” Smiling at me as if I just ran the New York Marathon, she then proceeds to tell me that I now require “progressive lenses” and 325-mag reading glasses.

Staring at her with slack-jawed miasma, I tell her that I can “manage just fine” and that since I am constantly losing my Dollar Store reading glasses, I really don’t feel an overwhelming desire to walk around with $900 glasses that will make me feel “like a new and younger man!” I won’t feel very young if I find them in a snowbank after running over them with the Toro Supercharger that does zero-to-thirty in less than sixty seconds and blows snow fifty feet in the air.

Then off I went to the dentist for the afternoon ordeal, only to have this millennial mouth-breather dental technician constantly scold me for “not flossing enough” as she takes her Black & Decker plaque remover to my gums.

Then the Generation X Chinese dentist looks into my mouth with his forehead lamp blinding me and tells me that an “old filling” (from the 1900s, he is sure) has come loose and he will need to clean it up. So, driving home to the site of lovely Lake Scugog, I was astonished that a policeman (who shaves once a month) didn’t pull me over and yank my license for the “unsafe operation of a vehicle” because I can’t read the bottom line of the eye chart or because my root canal from 1937 is failing.

All in all, this was just “one of those days.”

About The Author

error: Content is protected !!