My wife has beautiful blue eyes. But when we met in college, it looked as though she had cut off the bottoms of two drinking glasses and glued them on her face.

She didn't wear her glasses very often (we never would have gone out), because she wore contacts 90 percent of the time. In that brief period between glasses and contacts at the beginning and end of the day, however, she'd feel her way across the room like she'd lost her seeing-eye dog.

I used to kid her at times, telling her that her spectacles were so thick and powerful she ought to be able to tell me what was going to happen tomorrow. But her icy stares, magnified by Coke bottles, let me know she didn't appreciate my humor.

Over the years I learned that making fun of her glasses was a good way to reserve a spot in the spare bedroom. Then a few years ago, my 40s hit me like a freight train with no brakes. My eyes started going, and first the newspaper's small type and then even the headlines became blurrier and blurrier.

I found myself buying -- and losing -- reading glasses every time I turned around. In the end, I decided to get a pair of bifocals, old-fashioned ones that wrapped around my ears and I couldn't lose.

Now that I was the four eyes in the family, it was open season. My wife started calling me "Grandpa" and "Ol' Man" and asking me if I needed her to cut up my food for me. It was particularly aggravating, seeing as I'd held my fire all those years, but to tell you the truth, I was just too old and tired to come up with a decent comeback.

Then, about six months ago, my wife started rubbing her eyes over her morning coffee, squinting at the newspaper and complaining about the lighting in our kitchen. Because I'm a better person than she is, I refrained from any smart-aleck comments or zingers and just told her that she was experiencing exactly what I had gone through a couple of years earlier. I even gently offered to let her borrow my bifocals.

She didn't want to admit that she needed to go to the eye doctor. So she went out and bought herself dollar-store reading glasses by the dozen and stashed them in strategic places around the house. In the mornings, before she'd had a chance to put in her contacts, she'd wear her regular glasses with her reading glasses on top of those, tilting her head back to see. Still, I said hardly a word because I am (if I haven't mentioned it before) the better person.

Last weekend, we were going away on an overnight trip, and my wife realized, as we pulled out of the driveway that she'd left all of her reading glasses in the house. I offered to turn around, but she refused, saying that while I may need them, she surely didn't.

Before we checked into our hotel, we stopped by one of those bath and body shops so she could get some bubble bath, another thing she'd forgotten to pack.

As she stood in line at the counter waiting to pay, she picked up a sample tube from the display, smelled it and rubbed a big gob of stuff all over her hands. As the cashier rang up the bubble bath, my wife kept rubbing away and then frowned at me.

"This lotion is too oily," she said. "I don't know how anyone could use it!"

The cashier looked up. "That's because," she said with a polite smile, "it's hair conditioner, ma'am."

The cashier led my wife over to a sink and allowed her to clean up, while I looked at the label through my Ol' Man bifocals, read it clearly and, being the better person, didn't say anything.

Back at the hotel the next morning, my wife was getting a shower as I was brushing my teeth, when suddenly she pulled the curtain aside, holding out a small bottle.

"Can you check the label to see what brand this is?" she asked. "This conditioner is not coming out of my hair, and I've been rinsing it forever!"

I put on my bifocals and squinted at the bottle.

"That's because," I said, wishing I weren't such a good person, "this time you actually are using hand lotion!"