Until I was 60, I was blessed with perfect vision. After that, my eyesight — like everything else — hit the skids.

The long and short of it (or if you prefer, the near and far of it) was I had to get bifocals.

I went to Eye Care for the Adirondacks and got my exam and prescription. That was the easy part. The hard part was choosing the frames.

If you’ll pardon the cheesy optical pun, the array of frames is blinding. They have them from Gucci, Pucci, Koochi-Koochi and every other imaginable designer label, but I forewent all of them. I know the purpose of designer glasses is to make you look like a Continental sophisticate, but nothing’s that’s easy. In reality, most people end up looking like some pathetic schlemiel who just scored from the free table at Marcello Mastroianni’s yard sale.

So I went with the old stand-by:  wire rims.

I thought they’d imbue me with a scholarly air, but of course they didn’t. Instead, I ended up looking like some former ’60s revolutionary wannabe, some putz who got his 15 minutes of fame taking over the Oberlin College cafeteria, demanding tofu be served at all three meals. During slow news weeks you see pics of those guys on Time magazine covers screaming, “Where Are They Now?”

But I could live with that. I got the glasses so I could see, not so I could be seen.

But aesthetics aside, wire rims have another problem. Because they’re metal, they go out of alignment from time to time. I take scrupulous care of my glasses, but no matter because every few months, both they and I are back in the shop for a tune-up. It’s not a big deal, obviously, and it’s made less of one by the technicians, who are efficient, helpful and friendly.

So about a month ago, when I started to get a pain under one of the nose rests, I trucked into ECftA. Barbara whipped out her pliers, ministered to my needs, and I was on my way … but only for a while. A day later, the pain came back. I waited a few more days to see if the pain’d go away, and when it didn’t, I went back.

This time it was Fred who worked his ocular magic. He looked at the nose rest and the temples, he twisted here, tweaked there, and then asked the inevitable question: “How do they feel now?”

They felt better, as I knew they would, but another question remained: Would they continue to feel better? Only time would tell — and it did. The pain returned, and so did I.

“Back again?” said Fred.

“Yeah,” I said. “It still hurts me.”

“OK,” he said. “Where, exactly, does it hurt?”

“Here,” I said, pointing to the precise spot — high on the left side of my nose, just off the inside corner of my eye.

He had me put my glasses on and then looked at them, intently. Next he frowned, as if my glasses looked fine the way they were. Then he shrugged, took the glasses and made some miniscule adjustment on the nose pad.

After that, he said if it kept hurting, for me to return. I said I would and then left.

At that point I was enshrouded in a fog of confusion. I mean, those people are experts, not me. If they’d adjusted and then readjusted my glasses, and the pain persisted, maybe the problem wasn’t with the glasses, but with me.

It turned out that was exactly the situation, but I never would’ve figured it out if it hadn’t been for my cat, Purrsia.

Dopey’s got a brand new bag

No, my cat can neither speak nor communicate telepathically. In fact, there’s nothing remarkable about her. She’s fat, friendly, has a voracious appetite, and sleeps almost all the time. But there’s one thing that sets her apart from all other cats I’ve had: She has a tear duct weird-out that acts up and gets goopy every so often. It’s nothing serious. I just monitor it and when it gets yuck-o, I give it warm seasalt-water soaks.

So after my last visit to ECotA, I was sitting in my chair with Purrsia on my lap, and when I checked her eye, a sudden epiphany hit me: Maybe my tear duct has a weird out too, and the eyepad’s pressure was what made it hurt.

Now what to do?

Well, the logical thing (at least to the AMA) would be to see my doctor. It’d not only be logical, but expensive. Especially if the problem was naught but a tear duct with a minor weird-out. And if it was, what would he tell me? Probably the same thing the vet told me to do with Purrsia: Apply seasalt-water soaks.

And that’s what I did.

So, you now ask, Did it work?

It did … somewhat. The pain diminished greatly but didn’t go away. So then I took the next logical step — I called Kookie.

Among her many other talents, the Kook is a skilled herbalist, and so I asked her if she could think of any herb that I could use that’d make my eye 100 percent groovy.

“Lemme think about it,” she said, “and I’ll call ya back.”

A while later, my phone rang, and it was her.

“All right,” she said, “I think I’ve got it.”

“And what is it?” I asked.

“Go to Nori’s and get a box of camomile teabags. Then put one in warm water and use it as a soak.”

“You sure it’ll work?” I asked.

“For what you’re paying me, you want a written guarantee?” she said.

I’ve never heard of a standup herbalist, but I fear I someday may.

After we hung up, I hied to Nori’s, bought the tea, came back and started using it for soaks. And within a day, all my pain vanished, and never returned. I called her back to report the good news.

“Glad to hear it,” she said. “But even if it hadn’t worked, the tea bags wouldn’t have gone to waste.”

“How you figure?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “you could always drink the tea.”

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever drunk camomile tea, but I have. The taste is hard to describe because there’s almost none.  And as for what taste there is? My sainted mother would’ve described it with one precise Yiddish word — “pishuks.”

And what does all that mean? Just this: I was overjoyed the camomile worked as a compress, and  spared me further eye misery.

And I was almost just as glad it spared me palate misery as well.