May 7, 2021 | ACTIVE LIFE | By Lorea Zabaleta | Illustration by Bibi Powers
Summer and its sunny days are nearly upon us. In fact, it’s already pretty sunny. This is, in theory, a good thing because it’s now the season of days spent climbing, biking, hiking, or just existing in the lovely outdoors. In practice, however, the summer fun hits a bit of a bump in the road when I cannot keep track of a single pair of sunglasses for an extended period of time.
If I were to chart the number of days I spend each summer with burned eyes and a headache due to a ‘misplacement,’ compared to the days I spend enjoying the luxury of eye protection, the latter portion of the chart would be embarrassingly small.
An obvious solution to this conundrum might be to simply become a sunhat person. Still, in all honesty, I don’t know if I’d have any more luck in that department, so I’ve learned to make do saying goodbye to a different pair of sunglasses every few months.
And I’m not the only one. Izzie Hicks ’22 faces a similar problem.
“I’ve just resorted to buying really cheap sunglasses from Target, so I don’t care as much when I lose them,” Hicks said. “I’m scared to buy, like, Ray Bans or anything nice [be]cause I know that I’ll lose them, like a fool.”
Like Hicks, I’ve found a balance, keeping a small budget while still managing to invest in sunglasses that I not only enjoy wearing but that also allow me to pretend I am protecting my retinas, ensuring that the brief time I spend with each pair is both special and treasured.
There are, however, also some specifics beyond this general advice on how to ensure minimal emotional damage per sunglass loss. Here are some strategies on how to go about procuring new pairs when needed.
- Do not, and I mean DO NOT, fall prey to the assumption that if you purchase a more expensive, nice pair of sunglasses you are monetarily incentivizing yourself to take better care of the glasses, because the only thing this will do is make the inevitable loss hurt more.
- This may be controversial, but I’m of the school of thought that if someone leaves sunglasses in your car or space of living for a certain amount of time and forgets about them, they become yours.
- Just never take them off. Sleep in them if you must. Croakies or some other form of sunglass retainment could be helpful for this.
- Hear me out on this one. Have several pairs at once and stash the backups in random places, and then when you lose the first pair, following the laws of lost objects, the preemptively stashed pair(s) will turn up.
- Two-for-one deals are your friend. As is the funky little rack of sunglasses at every gas station.
- Find a signature style that can be purchased at (almost) any location so that the inevitable hunt for a new pair is made as painless as possible. Personally, I go for the oversized, tortoiseshell round ones. Other options include but are not limited to: aviators, retro square, cat-eye, regular square, and sport/dad/the kind that make you look fast.
- Lastly and perhaps importantly, have fun with it.