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First thing I do every morning for the past 35-plus years: Reach for my eyeglasses.

Except now, they're not there.

Several months ago, I underwent LASIK surgery on my eyes. For the first time since I was 13 years old, I can go around without glasses. Don't need Õem. I can see.

Old habits die hard, and I still find myself patting down the bedside table in the morning in search of my glasses. I'm still surprised when I see myself in a mirror. If I have a blurry moment, I try to push up the glasses I'm not wearing, which is a good way to a get a thumb in the eye.

LASIK is a type of surgery done on the eyeball with a laser. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, and it's expensive, and there are other types of eye surgeries available, and you should consult your doctor, and blah, blah, blah.

Here's how it happened for me:

My wife, who'd worn contact lenses her entire adult life, decided to try LASIK. We had some extra money lying around, and she's unafraid of medical stuff, and we'd heard good things and what the heck. A simple outpatient operation, a day or two of minor discomfort, an ocean of eye drops, and, ba-da-bing, she could see perfectly.

Well, I had to have me some of that. I scraped up some more money and ran down to the eye doc and scheduled laser surgery, despite the fact that I normally avoid all things medical, because I'm an extra-large chicken.

My surgery date finally arrived, and I took the little "relaxing" pills the doctor prescribed, but I was still kind of twitchy, so they gave me another pill, and I got so relaxed that I slept for an hour in the recovery room before they kicked me out. I went home and slept for a day and a half, and when I awoke, I could see much, much better than ever before.

But not perfectly. My vision problems had been much worse than my wife's, requiring more laser-shaving. The doctor, being cautious, lasered not-quite-enough on my weak right eyeball.

As a result, my sight was 20/40 or so, which meant I could see the other cars while driving, but I couldn't read the street signs until I was right on top of them, which made for an interesting business trip to the unfamiliar environs of greater Los Angeles, but that's another story.

A worse problem: I could see the ballgame on TV, but I couldn't read the score.

So, I had to have another surgery in one eye. The doctor called it an "enhancement." I called it a tune-up.

He couldn't do the tune-up right away, because he had to wait until everything was completely healed up before he could operate again. So, I got some temporary glasses to wear for six months. Thinner lenses than any I'd ever worn before, but still glasses. Sigh.

Since they were temporary, I picked the cheapest frames and the type of bifocals with the dividing line in the lens, which was a mistake. I couldn't get used to that line. I kept tripping over things that weren't there.

By the time the second surgery rolled around, I was ready to get it done, just so I could stop falling over. The tune-up went great (more "relaxing" pills!), and I can see clearly now, up close and far away, without glasses.

But I still reach for them in the morning.