To My Lost Sunglasses
By: J.P. Melkus
Tags: Sunglasses, Fashion, Humor, Design, Economics

To My Lost Sunglasses

Love in a Time of Luxoticca

c/o Ernest on Flickr

Dear Mirrored Oakley Frogskins,

You were the first pair of expensive sunglasses I’d ever had. I got you in sixth grade from my brother, who was in fourth. I am pretty sure he and a friend were trafficking in stolen Oakley sunglasses and sunglasses parts. My dad thought I’d paid eighty dollars for you. I think it was twenty. You were left on a paper towel dispenser in a gas station bathroom on Highway 99 just north of Merced, California on our way to some amusement park. I begged my dad to turn around. He wouldn’t. He said it was a lesson and we were running behind. I think he was just pissed that my brother and I had expensive sunglasses while he was working double shifts. I got mad and said a bunch of stuff I still regret.

My brother said he could get me another pair next week. It was then that I knew he would never end up broke. I swore off expensive sunglasses. I was too cheap… and poor.

Oakley Frogskins, you remind me that my dad has made nothing but sacrifices in his life, while everything has fallen into my lap. So thank you for helping me appreciate my father and for keeping me from taking my life for granted. Also, thanks for proving to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that expensive sunglasses do, in fact, look better than cheap ones and don’t hurt your head. I’m pretty sure that is the result of corporate collusion because there’s no reason they can’t make cheaper sunglasses that look good and don’t hurt your head. Maybe they do now. Warby Parker or something? Maybe my head is just too big. Either way, does no one care about corporate collusion any more? When did “free market” people drop the word, “competition” from their political vocabulary? Late-stage global capitalism sucks.

Sincerely, JP

Dear Bollé Anaconda Tortoise Shells,

You were my first pair of expensive sunglasses not fenced by my brother. I accidentally left you on a head of lettuce at a Central Market grocery store in Dallas, where I had placed you for my amusement, in an homage to Cast Away.

Wilson!, I’d softly wailed to myself with a chuckle. (I was single for a long time.)

Are those mine?

Then I got distracted. When I got to the parking lot, I noticed you were gone. I returned to look for you, but it was too late. I asked a clerk in produce. He said he hadn’t seen them. I think he was lying. I knew I should have left you hanging on my shirt like usual. That’s what I get for my callow mockery of Tom Hanks’s earnest, emotional tour de force.

You were gone. You had fit me perfectly, misaligned ears and all. I was twenty-five, so your “youthful performance” style didn’t look ridiculous on me yet. I tried to find another pair just like you, but I could not. There was a reason for that. It is nefarious…

I’ve since learned that the dearth of you, Bollé, is because you are one of the few luxury sunglasses brands not owned by transnational eyewear and optometry monopoly, Luxoticca, you and your brand brethren are only sold in limited quantities at a few specialty retailers. Worldwide laissez-faire has truly run amok, Bollé Anacondas. Think about it. There is essentially one luxury sunglasses company in the world and it owns Pearle Vision and LensCrafters too?! This is madness. Shall we be masters of the economy or shall it be ours? They had this debate a hundred years ago. Why are we having it again now?

All the Best, JP

Dearest Ray Ban Yellowish/Clear Rims with Dark Blue Temples I, II, and III,

For more than a decade, you were “my” sunglasses. You sort of defined my whole look, sunglasses-wise. You were classic, yet stood out from the crowd. You weren’t as fearfully conformist as the trad/preppy tortoise-shell Wayfarers. Yet you weren’t trying too hard to be funky either. Once in a while, I’d run into someone else wearing a pair of you. We’d nod to each other, recognizing our shared taste and tastefulness — a visual admiration society.

Our last day together. (Me and my sunglasses, not me and my wife.)

I had my first pair of you for five years. I don’t remember what happened to them. I think I left them on a paper towel dispenser in a bathroom in a ski lodge in Keystone, Colorado. Wait, again with the paper towel dispenser thing? I hadn’t realized that until just now. The second of you lasted another five years. I think those ended up in an ex-girlfriend’s car, never to be returned after our breakup. The last of you was left in a National Park Service bathroom on Mount Haleakala, on Maui, in Hawaii. My wife and I had just seen the most amazing sunset of our lives from its Mars-like peak and had watched the stars for hours afterward. The firmament was still negatived inside my eyelids when I went blinking into the buzzing, fluorescently lit bathroom. Nearly blinded, I removed you and your attached Croakies to wash my face. I set you on a paper towel dispenser and… wait… the third fucking time that’s happened?! What is wrong with me? These things don’t grow on trees… The sunglasses, that is. The paper towels do, in a way.

At any rate, I didn’t notice you were gone until the next day. It was too late. I think I paid $80 for my first pair in 2006 or so. I saw a pair at Sunglass Hut last week for $180!!! Come on, a 225% increase in twelve years! What do you take us for, Luxoticca? A bunch of monkeys in cages pushing buttons to get shiny objects? Shiny objects with delicious plastic frames, sensuous hinge-feel, impeccable polarized lenses, and a dizzying array of colors and styles? Well, we’re not…

And, I don’t even see them on the website any more. What’s that about, Luxoticca? Planned obsolescence?! Engineered scarcity!? I wish I could buy equally awesome sunglasses from a competitor, but they only sell Bollés at a little ski shop ten miles away from my house and they only ever have about four pairs in stock. Where is the Justice Department antitrust division? Will someone call in to Fox & Friends so we can get something done about this situation? This is corporate tyranny.

Yours In Christ, JP

Darling Ray Ban Sliver and Black New Aviators,

You were my “second pair,” but you were never second in my heart. When I needed some sunglasses with a little more formality than my yellow and blue Wayfarers, you were always there. Funerals. Business lunches. Anything with a suit. But you could dress down just as well. You should see you paired with a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a nice stainless-steel watch.

I had you for nearly ten years. You spent, literally, twenty percent of that time — at least — in the inside pocket of some sport coat or another, buried deep in my closet. I’d think you were gone, but then I’d find you again when I had to dig out a sport coat to go to a play or a date or something.

New Aviators, I was wearing you in one of the pictures on my Match.com profile that your mom — sorry, my wife — saw just before she and I met. Maybe you helped get me that first date and then a marriage to the greatest woman I’ve ever known… and in some indirect yet magical way, I suppose you led to the birth of our wonderful daughter.

RIP, New Aviators. (Photo by frank green on Unsplash)

Ironic it is then, that our beautiful baby, whom you in some small way helped bring into this world, took you the hell out of it when she grabbed you right off my F-ing face and threw you into a koi pond at a botanical garden while my wife napped a few feet away. I was trying to show her the overfed fish-monsters but the little cutie, as always, was only interested in daddy’s glasses. You’re probably there to this day, Silver and Black New Aviators, covered in fish shit at the bottom of a crappy carp hole. And it’s a shame too, because I’d only just found you again a few days before, after you’d spent about six months in the glove box of my wife’s car. Sorry I didn’t look for you that hard.

It’s touching in a way how a good pair of sunglasses can be a companion on your journey through life, there with you as you grow older and happier. Always around to keep you from getting crow’s feet and UV damage on your corneas and such like.

I really held on to you, New Aviators. For years! I even ordered replacement arms from Ray Ban when one of them broke on you. I had the new ones put on at a nearby Sunglass Hut. For free. That was nice. Sure, you couldn’t just buy one arm and they were sixty bucks for the pair, but it was a lot cheaper and less wasteful than throwing you out, New Aviators. I mean a new pair of you is [**check website**]… $183?!?! What the shit hell is this, Luxoticca?

Maybe I’ll wait until my birthday to replace you. After all, on your birth month each year, Sunglass Hut sends you a great coupon for 10% off any pair of sunglasses over $100 and 20% off any pair over $200…

Too bad that it just so happens that there are no sunglasses at Sunglass Hut that are just barely over $100 or just a bit over $200. There are only pairs between $150 and $199 and then pairs between $250 and $299. Horse. Shit. I mean, this is an abuse of monopoly power, pure and simple! There are no viable consumer alternatives. This is price gouging. We may have to consider torches, pitchforks, and tippin’ over shit, people. THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS!

Once Upon a Time in the West, JP

Dear Folding Wayfarer Tortoise Shells,

Why do I even bother? You were supposed to be my “third pair.” Just something to mix it up. Something I could put in my pocket. But then I put you in my pocket with my keys and you got scratched. Right in the middle of the left lens. New lenses are $55, but considering you were like $120, I can’t bring myself to do it. Especially since you spent the last two years in the pocket of a jacket that was only recently returned to me by an old roommate. I missed you. Well, I didn’t miss you miss you, but I missed the $120 that you represented.

I mean, don’t get me wrong was nice to have you back, but what do I need three pairs of sunglasses for? And it’s only been a month since I got you back and I already can’t fucking find you again! I know it’s not your fault, but still. One other thing, though, you’re $153 now?! I’m married with a daughter and am a stay-at-home dad. I just can’t afford to play Luxoticca’s game any longer.

And, nothing personal, but your style is wrong for me now anyway. Don’t get me wrong, Folding Wayfarers, it’s not you. I like the idea of folding sunglasses. I’m sure you’re great for some people. Young guys. Guys with cargo shorts maybe. But for me, in practice, it is probably better if my sunglasses don’t actually fit in my pocket. There’s just too much shit in there. Sharp, scratchy items especially. Just not enough room at all, really. Especially since I had to move my wallet to my front pocket because of lingering issues with my lower back and sciatic nerve. Welcome to forty! (Am I right, Folding Wayfarers?)

And honestly, what kind of revolutionary leftist am I anyway if I keep buying expensive sunglasses from an international monopolistic corporation based in fucking Milan that holds control over such an obscene, bourgeois contraption as luxury sunglasses?! What kind of revolutionary leftist have I ever been? I had three pairs of Ray Bans at one time! What kind of people are any of us? Three pairs of sunglasses… Are we consumers or human beings?! The thing is, I need to choose sides, Folding Wayfarers, and I won’t be on the side of our corporate overlords for one more moment.

Plus with a little baby running around wreaking havoc all day, I just cannot keep up with nice sunglasses anymore. I’ll just get a pair at Target or whatever. Maybe Warby Parker or something. Are Knockarounds OK? No offense. Anyway, farewell, Folding Wayfarers. Stay fold school.

Your Comrade in the Struggle, JP