DECATUR — I still remember when I turned 40-something and noticed my eyesight wasn’t quite as good as it used to be. Reading was a bit tougher - the letters were a bit fuzzier and harder to distinguish - and though it was slight, I also noticed when on patrol duty that I had to get a little closer to the cars in front of me to read the license plate numbers.

I visited the eye doctor and he recommended readers to help with the up-close stuff but said my distance vision was still close to 20-20. That worked for a while. But in a few years, I was back at the eye doctor again. Things were getting noticeably worse with the up-close stuff. This time, my eye doctor prescribed a pair of progressive lens glasses.

When my new spectacles came back from the lab, he told me it would take a little time to get used to them and advised some patience and persistence in their use. I tried and wore them faithfully every day, but for some reason I couldn’t adjust. I was truck driving then and found them irritating. Though they helped me see the up-close stuff, like my gauges and log book, they made things worse at a distance, made my head spin with the peripheral stuff and gave me headaches after a few hours of use. I tried to wear them, thinking I’d adjust, but I gave up on them when I picked up a $5 pair of bifocals at a Maryland truck stop andfound they worked much better than my prescription glasses. Mrs. Griz made fun of me for wearing cheap truckstop glasses instead of the expensive ones prescribed by my eye doctor, so I kept retrying my prescription glasses from time to time but always went back to what worked.

After several years had passed, I gave my eye doctor another chance. He gave me another pair of graduated bifocals, and the results were no better. I tried to wear them, but it was hard to read with them and they made what was in the distance blurry.

It was frustrating and I came near to throwing them out the window and under the turning wheels of my big truck on numerous occasions, but I finally put them away and used cheap department store bifocals instead. From time to time, I got out my prescription glasses and tried them again because I wasn’t able to accurately focus my old manual-focus cameras or clearly see the front sights of my pistol or rifle when target shooting back in Kansas.

Frustration finally got the best of me and I smashed the frames in my hand so I’d never try them again - but I did try them again a few more times after filing down the lenses to fit the frame of some scratched up $5 bifocals.

The problem, it seems, was that my eye doctor wanted to be sure to make my glasses strong enough. But he made them too strong. Some folks might have adjusted, but as a person who is continually trying to achieve sharp focus with a camera and often watching for wildlife or looking at scenes which lead the eye out to infinity (in focal terms), out of focus at a distance just wasn’t acceptable to me. It drove me nuts.

Well, after eight or nine years of wearing the cheap bifocals and having a collection of reading glasses of different strengths scattered in various places in my car and around the house and office to accommodate different needs - computer, reading, close-up work, and mid-range for seeing clearly at arm’s length and a little beyond - my son, an optometrist in Jonesboro, decided it was time to give me an eye exam. I told him of the troubles I’d had with glasses and he suggested I might be better off with a regular lined bifocal if I couldn’t adjust to the progressive lenses. But when I took my prescription to a lab to have a pair of spectacles made and was offered two pair for the price of one, I decided to give progressive lenses one last try with one of the two pairs of glasses.

It’s looking like I’ll be able to get rid of the cheap glasses I have accumulated everywhere, because I can see again. Things at a distance are a bit sharper than they were before, and I can focus my manual cameras - Now I’m really anxious to go out and shoot some film.

And the up-close and mid-range stuff is sharp too. I can read with my new glasses, set type and edit on my computer, and see clearly at any range instead of needing to hold things at a precise distance to be able to read the fine print and see the details. I can even see my gun sights again, making me want to head to the range.

The truth is, in spite of all my difficulties with previous spectacles, I like my progressive lenses so well I ordered my second pair in the same format - only tinted for use in the outdoors - instead of a getting a lined bifocal.

With all the trouble I’ve had with eye glasses, I wondered just a little if my son would get it right. He did. Both Mrs. Griz and I can see much better again. Now, I’m wondering if we should go see the M.D. son in the family and see if he can fix all our other ailments.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/20/2010