So, I've worn bifocals since I was 5, and, yeah, you're kind of jealous since only the very coolest kids in grade school wore glasses and the non-spectacle wearing kids -- the ones we mocked horribly with our taunts of "Two-eyes!" and "Non-freak!" -- slunk along behind us, hoping to be caught up in the wake of our popularity. But it's cool, we're all beyond the 6th grade bitterness and hard feelings and plots of poisoning our classmates, right?

Anyway, as a member of the coolest of the cool, the Bifocalnati, I enjoyed popularity that rose to unparalleled heights. The only possible downside was the line across my lenses, the one that people would suddenly notice, exclaiming that I had broken my glasses! Both lenses! In the same place! Perfectly in half! And, and, and . . .!

I maybe got a little tired of that.

Also wearying was the unfortunate stereotype regarding middle aged people and the wearing of bifocals. Absurd, of course. No one over the age of 25 could ever dream of aspiring to such coolness, but some stories just can't be killed, I guess.

Yesterday I picked up a new pair of glasses, my first pair ever with progressive lenses.

Whoa.

I will be the first to tell you that never in my 26 years of bifocals had the line bothered me. Not at all. I didn't even notice it.

And yet, the aforementioned whoa.

If you've had a pebble in your shoe for 26 years, and you can't remember a time when you didn't have the pebble, you'd probably claim it didn't bug you at all either. Until the day you took it out. "Oh my," you'd think to yourself. "That's quite a difference, isn't it?"

But I'm not you, and my reaction was a bit more along the lines of "HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT! WHAT THE HOLY FUCKING FUCK HAVE I BEEN MISSING!"

It's a pretty big difference to me.