I have been wearing eyeglasses since I was 5 years old. You remember those opaque things with a metal bar running through the plastic. Now frames are featured in fashion magazines and there is no limit to the prices they can demand.

A story came to my mind after I was having new glasses fitted, due to a recent cataract operation on my right eye. As a child my right eye was perfect 20/20, but for the past six months it caused blurriness. I couldn't read the huge highway signs from a distance.

Back to my outdated story.

I was coming home from elementary school, P.S. 50 in the East Bronx. I was 8 years old. The school was two blocks from my apartment. For some reason, I was running (in the gutter) with my books. Either I was chasing someone or someone was chasing me. Stories fade after 65 years.

As I was running, I stopped suddenly. My precious glasses in my starched, Lucky Boy white shirt followed Newton's Law. They flew out of my shirt breast pocket, slid along the ground and went directly into a sewer opening. Boy, was I in trouble. The eyeglasses cost every bit of $11.

My friends and I tried to fish the opticals out of the sewer. We tried coat hangers, stickball sticks with chewing gum on the end. It was hopeless.

Finally, I went home to my parents' Dry Goods Store and confessed my loss to my parents. Oh, the pandemonium! Some genius in the store popped up with "Call the NYC Department of Sanitation." My immigrant father managed to get them and we all traveled back to the offending sewer.

They fished out the glasses in a short time and handed them back to me. "Better run them under hot water for awhile," was the sanitation man's suggestion. I think my father tipped him $5.

I obeyed his orders and I washed them thoroughly.

I wore them for the next five years. In today's wasteful, recklessly extravagant society, they would have been replaced immediately.

I am slowly getting used to my new glasses.

I will try to keep them out of the sewer.

Corrections: Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 column: The Australians pronounce Melbourne as "Melbin." Ken Rosewall is spelled with two "l's."