I distinctly remember where I was and what I was doing when I first realized I needed glasses. I don’t remember exactly when although I know it was near the end of third grade and before fourth, which would put it in 1977. But the location is unforgettable.

I sat with my family in the upper deck of Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium enjoying an Orioles game. We were on the first-base side, facing the big scoreboard beyond the left-center field fence.

Since most of my siblings and both of my parents wore glasses, I knew even then at not quite 9 that I would eventually have to wear them as well. The day of reckoning came that night as I struggled to read the numbers on the scoreboard.

So when I started fourth grade that fall at a new school, I had specs. It was bad enough that I was the new kid and could tend to have a big mouth. Now I had glasses. What a perfect combination. Let’s just say I heard my share of “Four Eyes” jokes.

I managed to survive and some sort of corrective lenses have been part of my life ever since. Over the past 30-plus years, I have grown from a kid who squinted to read the scoreboard at a baseball game several hundred feet away to a man who struggles to read the alarm clock a few feet away without glasses on.

None of it really bothers me, to be honest. I don’t even think twice about wearing contacts every day and have even gotten better at making sure I remove them before I take a nap. But I have slowly discovered something that changes the whole game, and I don’t know how much I like it.

I think I need bifocals.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the people who make catalogs and magazines and boxes of food are doing something funny with their type which makes it difficult for me to clearly read the type except at a specific distance, which of course changes constantly.

I have had this thought in my brain for a while now, but never really embraced it. The location for this epiphany is not nearly as exciting as the one in my childhood. I was sitting on the couch.

If I had followed my instincts and known that I would find all the prices in the Land’s End for Men catalog too high for my liking, I never would have figured things out.

Instead, I perused the selections and found myself straining to read the way-too-high prices for sweaters and khakis. I knew I could not put things off any longer.

My contacts don’t run out for a while, so I think I can hold off going to the eye doctor for a little while. But when I do go, I really need to do more than just get a new prescription.

In the meantime, I guess I could go buy a pair of those reading glasses things. That might solve the problem for a while. I just worry that some bully at work will call me “Six Eyes.”