Reading glasses are my superpower, the power to see

I’ve come to like these reading glasses perched halfway down my nose.

It’s been a decade since I realized I could spot a clearance sign in the back corner of Old Navy but couldn’t read the 20%-off coupon in my hand.

So while waiting for a prescription, I wandered over to the rack of reading glasses. Like a 12-year-old about to shoplift a Bonne Bell lip gloss, I looked first to the left, and then to the right.

I slid on a pair of tortoise shell glasses and looked in the mirror.

Whoa. The downside to seeing better is that you see everything better. My pores were huge, and oh, man, my eyebrows.

I bought a pair anyway because nothing says, “My eyesight is going and I’m cheap” like drugstore reading glasses and, well, my eyesight was going and I was cheap.

I go through a lot of pairs. I drop them off the top of my head and leave them in restaurants.

My friend Mark suggested I wear them on a cord. He does.

(It’s fine for him — he’s married. I’d look like my Nana.)

So I keep two pairs in my purse, one in the car and a half dozen around the house.

Because I’ve discovered the upside of reading glasses. (Besides seeing better.)

There is a respectful silence when I say, “Let me get my glasses,” open one arm and then the other, pause dramatically, and slide them on.

According to researchers, we think people who wear glasses are smarter and more honest, sophisticated and industrious.

(Yes, OK, another study says they make us look older.)

But I’ve also discovered that a stare over the top of my reading glasses can quiet a child, end an argument and send even the bravest of my coworkers back a step.

It’s like a superpower, magnified by 2.0.