THE OLDER I get, the more I realize that you have absolutely no control over most aspects of aging.

Which is why I'm tilting my head up and down as I write this, trying to make these progressive bifocals perched on my nose work the way they should.

It's not the glasses.

The nice eye doctor and the glasses store staff did their jobs just right to put me in a pair that meet all my needs.

I'm just slow learning how to use them.

A bit of background: Years ago, I was first awarded a pair of glasses to help me slightly improve my distance vision.

I did what any rational, right-thinking person would--tried them for a week or two, then popped them in a drawer where they still sit today.

But time has a way of making fools of us all.

A year or so back, I realized that my arms weren't long enough to help my eyes focus on the little print--you know, movie times, restaurant menus, paperbacks--where the words seem to dissolve into each other.

For a while, I did what I always do with problems of this type.

I ignored it.

But after regularly showing up at 3 p.m. for a movie that started at 2, or asking for No. 2 on the menu, and getting cod when I thought it said veal, it was time for action.

I did what all of us do when age takes away our close-up vision: bought a handful of those "cheater" magnifying glasses from the drugstore.

For a while, this sufficed. I could read for more than 20 minutes without getting a headache. I could order in restaurants without having someone interpret for me, and I showed up early or late for movies only when I forgot which theater ad I was reading.

In other words, life was back to normal again.

But over the past year or two, my eyes caught up with me again.