I had known for some time that the cheap sunglasses would not make it through the summer. Heck, in all honesty, they hadn't made it through the spring. Still, I persisted in wearing them, training my eyes to see through the increasingly scratched lenses.
You know how stubborn I can be, the crazy amount of importance I can attach to inanimate objects.
Such as these cheap sunglasses.
I originally had received them at a Sand Gnats' game. A free promotional item, courtesy of that night's sponsor, a free paper which listed ads for everything from yard sales to jobs. I had originally intended to slip them into my glove box, as a back-up pair of shades. Nothing to be worn continuously, you see.
Instead, the sunglasses had ended up in a drawer in the bureau, waiting for some use to be made of them. They waited for years. Years. Perhaps even a decade.
After all, I had some snazzy new "movie star" shades I was sporting, with bits of sparkly stone in the corners of the large, brown-tinted frames. These shades were replacements for the cat's eye-lens, black-framed "movie star" shades I had worn for years. The row of little jewels set into the browline of the frame had sufficient missing stones that the gaps detracted greatly from the glamour. I gave that pair of shades to my bff's daughter (who, as I recall, promptly lost them) and started wearing the new pair purchased from a Chinese restaurant at which my stepmom and I had lunched.
Unfortunately, those shades were made of a more brittle plastic. They graced my face for only a few months before the frames shattered, rendering them useless. Drats!
What to do? The day was sunny and my eyes needed protection now. Plus, it happened to be a school day, meaning I had no time for plowing through racks of eyewear in search of a replacement pair.
And I remembered the ones in the drawer, still in their plastic sleeve, waiting. Fine, they would have to do!
They have done, too. The bright neon-green against my dark hair made it easy for my students to spot me across campus, to come ask me "just one more question." They thought I must be "cool", too; after all, none of their other professors wore such youthful eyewear.
Anyone looking for me in a crowd just had to espy those nearly-fluorescing sidearms to find me. That was very helpful when I was in a large group of people, at the beach, at loud concerts, in crowded restaurants, at the ball games. Even in other countries! I had worn the sunglasses on the trip to Italy last year and any stragglers had no fear of losing sight of the group as long as they could spot my neon green eyewear or butterfly-bedecked totebag.
That neon green even helped me after the trip! Our travel bunch had formed a social page to share pictures and I could easily spot myself in the photographs taken by the future nurses. Very nice!
And so I had continued to wear them, scratched lenses and all. The frames were actually in very good shape, still qs sturdy as they ever were. That, no doubt, is part of the reason I persisted in wearing them. They fit just fine and still looked as they ever had, so why give them up?
Well, no more. I realized this morning, as I departed Williamsburg for points south that I was tilting my head to better adjust my line of sight through the least-scratched edges of the lenses.
Seriously.
There are no words for that kind of crazy.
I actually had to break the sidearms off from the body of the sunglasses.
When I reached home, I arranged the pieces and took the above picture to post with this entry.
But I found it difficult to actually throw away the three pieces. Why? Well, maybe I could put them into a scrapbook for the trip to Italy? Sure, that might one day happen, even though more than a year has now elapsed since the trip.
Maybe there would one day be a cure for badly scratched and scuffed lenses? Sure, for eyes. Not for sunglasses. For those, you would need to buy replacement lenses.
Oh, hey, I might do that some day!
Really?
Really???
No.
Into the trash they went.
Meanwhile, I had bought a new pair of shades just recently down in my favorite place in Florida.
You get three guesses what color they are.
(smile)
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