A 26 Year Love Affair
No Trades For These Shades!
You never forget your first really good pair of sunglasses...
After years of dicking around with drug store Foster Grants and those horrible folding Porsche sunglasses, my true love found me one dark night, just chilling on the pavement.
The year was 1985. I was driving back from my friend Zibig's house. Well, truth be told, I was wobbling back on my motor scooter, pissed to the gills on either Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers or some other cheap hooch we'd convinced some store clerk to sell us.
As I zipped down the road, relying on the gyroscopic action of the scooter wheels to keep me upright, I caught a flash of something reflecting my headlight. Circling back, I discovered a pair of sunglasses sitting on the pavement."Hmmmm..." sez I. "Bet someone's gonna be PO'ed when the sun comes up." Not being inclined to pass up a bargain, I scooped 'em up and took them home.
Turned out to be a brand-new pair of Vuarnet 4002's, aka the "CatEye" model. Not even a scratch on the lenses!
Man, I loved those shades. Nylon frames made them virtually unbreakable. They were mirrored, but in a subtle, blended fashion, not the shiny cop style. They fit my face better than any other pair of sunglasses I'd tried, and damn if they didn't look sharp! Of course, you couldn't beat the price.
For the next several years, you couldn't have pried those things off my face. Mostly because there was no effin' way I could have afforded to replace them if they got lost!
That pair of sunglasses finally died a tragic death in the early 90's. My sister & I went through a period of some years where things didn't go so well between us. How to decribe the relationship? "Contentious" is too mild a word, and "Loathing" might be a tad strong. At any rate, one day she finally got on my last nerve and lacking any throwing knives or lawn darts, I heaved the nearest object at hand towards her at a high rate of speed down my parent's hallway. My sister, being a harpy-in-training but no fool, slammed a door shut between us, and those 4002's exploded in a shower of lenses and earpieces.
I took a while to get another pair. When you're a college student on your own nickel, a pair of shades costing over a C-note just isn't prudent. I finally got another pair of 4002's in the mid-90's, and have had them ever since, owing largely to the fact that maturity on both our parts has decreased the amount of airborne eyewear between me & my sister.
You never forget your first really good pair of sunglasses...
After years of dicking around with drug store Foster Grants and those horrible folding Porsche sunglasses, my true love found me one dark night, just chilling on the pavement.
The year was 1985. I was driving back from my friend Zibig's house. Well, truth be told, I was wobbling back on my motor scooter, pissed to the gills on either Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers or some other cheap hooch we'd convinced some store clerk to sell us.
As I zipped down the road, relying on the gyroscopic action of the scooter wheels to keep me upright, I caught a flash of something reflecting my headlight. Circling back, I discovered a pair of sunglasses sitting on the pavement."Hmmmm..." sez I. "Bet someone's gonna be PO'ed when the sun comes up." Not being inclined to pass up a bargain, I scooped 'em up and took them home.
Turned out to be a brand-new pair of Vuarnet 4002's, aka the "CatEye" model. Not even a scratch on the lenses!
Man, I loved those shades. Nylon frames made them virtually unbreakable. They were mirrored, but in a subtle, blended fashion, not the shiny cop style. They fit my face better than any other pair of sunglasses I'd tried, and damn if they didn't look sharp! Of course, you couldn't beat the price.
For the next several years, you couldn't have pried those things off my face. Mostly because there was no effin' way I could have afforded to replace them if they got lost!
That pair of sunglasses finally died a tragic death in the early 90's. My sister & I went through a period of some years where things didn't go so well between us. How to decribe the relationship? "Contentious" is too mild a word, and "Loathing" might be a tad strong. At any rate, one day she finally got on my last nerve and lacking any throwing knives or lawn darts, I heaved the nearest object at hand towards her at a high rate of speed down my parent's hallway. My sister, being a harpy-in-training but no fool, slammed a door shut between us, and those 4002's exploded in a shower of lenses and earpieces.
I took a while to get another pair. When you're a college student on your own nickel, a pair of shades costing over a C-note just isn't prudent. I finally got another pair of 4002's in the mid-90's, and have had them ever since, owing largely to the fact that maturity on both our parts has decreased the amount of airborne eyewear between me & my sister.
posted by El Capitan | 4:29 PM
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