There Have Been

Bad Moments


She Thinks My Sunglasses are Funny
Beau doh doh dah...
4-13

See, I got this woman. Great curves, serious legs. She smiles sunshine, blushes like a baby, and whenever she laughs you feel like you've just sucked a dot of honey off of your fingertips. It's hard not to act too lucky, hard to not front a little when she's at my side.
 
She's the kind of girl that makes makes you want to be a good man. Makes you want to prove your worth. Having a woman like this in my life sometimes makes me wonder if I have helped enough old ladies across the street in my lifetime. You know, if I've done enough good things to deserve the love of someone like this?
 
It scares the hell out of me sometimes when I realize that I've let a lot of old ladies take their own chances at the crosswalk.
 
There's only one problem...
 
She thinks my sunglasses are funny.
 
I like dark sunglasses. Ones with the brown lenses that people can't see through. But even after all of these years, I still haven't figured out which style of frames looks the best on me -- and that's where the problem comes in. For example, I don't think that I look that good in those John Lennon specs, and I've never really been able to pull off any sense of coolness when I put on Wayfarers or pimp glasses. Lord knows I've tried to wear these things before, but they always looks ridiculous on me.
 
Fortunately, I usually lose my sunglasses a few months after buying them, so even when I buy a pair that makes me look like a dork, it's only embarrassing for a little while.
 
Every year when the sun starts to come out for real, I get the urge to buy a new pair of shades. Not just to block out the light, but mainly because I think that they look cool. It's kinda silly, I know -- but there's just something about hiding your eyes that gives off a vibe of control. It's like you know what you've got, know where you're going. It doesn't necessarily mean that I actually know what I've got or where I'm going -- but sometimes putting out that vibe just feels good.
 
Besides, people don't have as much power to judge you when you've got the shades down. I mean, they do it anyway -- that's just the way of the world, but when you're glassed up dark their cuts don't get through quite as well. It's like you're holding all the power. I like that.
 
But she doesn't see all of these subtexts. She just looks at the way the sunglasses make me look when they are one my face.
 
She says I always buy the same ones. Every year I complain that I can't find my old shades, and then every year when I go out and buy a new pair, she looks at me, and I can tell that she's kinda smirking.
 
I think she knows that I like shades because I think they make me look cool. I think she laughs at me because she knows that I'm trying to put on some sort of attitude that isn't really who I am. And there isn't much that I can say when she catches me like that... because she's usually right.
 
See, somewhere deep inside, I still want to look like a rock star. And there's nothing really wrong with that except it's a very difficult look to pull off when you're standing in line at the grocery store with a package of diapers in your hand.
 
But what am I supposed to do? I'm too low-rent and absent-minded to be buying name-brand sunglasses, so I just have to try my best to find something that will work until the day that I put them down somewhere and forget to pick them back up. So every year when I get that jones to buy some rock star shades, I find myself standing in front of that plastic turntable sunglass rack thingee that they have in the store, trying on anything that might look good on me.
 
The real problem with buying cheapo shades is that you can only choose from the stuff they have in the store. And I'm no expert, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that some of these things have probably been hanging there for a couple of decades.
 
There's no one to help you, no one to suggest a direction for you to go to....
 
I mean, I'm a guy -- I don't know this stuff
 
Imagine for a second that someone gives a chimpanzee a bucket of paint and a canvas to work on. Sure the chimp's got some sort of artistic ideal in mind when he starts slinging paint around, but when everybody else looks at it, all they see is monkey mess.
 
That's what it's like when I try to buy fashion accessories for myself.
 
To start with, sunglasses are displayed on a rack, not on someone's head. Because of this, I tend to gravitate towards sunglasses with all the fancy angles and edges. As a general rule, I will try on anything that I could never see my grandmother wearing. But when you get right down to it, What do I know from sunglasses? I just stand there like a schmuck with whatever pair happened to be closest to my hand, staring into that tiny mirror they've got hanging there, holding the little tag up so I can see how they look on my nose.
 
Believe me when I say this, You simply cannot get your mack on while you're holding a tag over your nose...
 
So it's not like I ever really get to see how I'm going to look in my shades until it's too late to do anything about it.
 
The best I can do in this situation is stick with my own instincts. The sunglasses that I think make me look like a complete doofus I put back. The ones that sort of make me look like a rock star I consider buying. I don't know what shape of frame looks good one me, I just know the ones I don't like.
 
But every time she sees me with my new shades on, she does that thing where she's smiling and biting her tongue at the same time, and I suddenly realize that I've gone and done it again....
 
She thinks my sunglasses are funny.

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