Through A Glass Darkly - Alarming Spectacles

Before I begin, let me state that I have a grudge to bear in this post. I do not own a pair of sunglasses. I have owned them in the past, but not for long. Every pair I have ever had has disappeared - probably into the same black hole that swallows socks and car keys...

That said, I observed drivers on the way to work this morning - this was a cloudy and dull portion of a stormy day. I counted a dozen pairs of dark spectacles on their noses . I looked at people waiting at bus stops - no sunglasses on anyone. Yet it was the same daylight...

Visitors come to our shop wearing their sunglasses. And continue wearing them through their consultation, leaving me at a loss to know what their eyes are doing there in the gloom. I suspect that this is the intention - they think they are playing a game of poker with me and that I must not se their eyes lest I guess their strategy. No need for that - I know what they want - the most equipment for the least price. Love is blind but avarice sees pretty good.

The really fun part is observing the shifts they put themselves to to wear the dark spectacles on some other part of the anatomy. I remember that girls used to perch them on the top of their beehive hairdo's ( and that tells you how long my memory goes back... ) to make a fashion statement. As if the the hair was not high enough, they added a further layer. Girls, at 19 years old, I wasn't looking at your hair...

Nor am I looking at the hair or lack of it on the top of the cool guy who does the same thing. Did you learn that from the girls? Are you prepared for the sunglasses to descend like a guillotine onto your nose when you lean forward? I am just praying...

And the chap who sticks them up into his Afrika Korps-style forage cap and comes in to the shop. General Rommel, is that you?

Ah, but I should not complain. The middle of the afternoon here is dull enough and sometimes these sights rescue my soul. I cannot resist looking at the chaps who reverse the frame of the glasses and wear them on the back of their heads - for all the world like Cousin It on vacation. It is hard to tear your eyes away from the sight. Even harder to avoid a rude stare at the one individual who came in with the earpieces of his sunnies perched in the earholes and the lenses resting on his lower lip. When he started to speak I thought I had never seen a finer sight.

I am aware that there are at least two other dispositions of sunglasses that might be achieved by the inventive. If I see them, I shall consider my collection complete.