UVA/UVB

My eighth grade class took a week long trip to Washington D.C. The school provided a list of items that would be necessary or useful on the trip to our parents, so that they could send us off well-prepared. One item on the list was sunglasses. So, while we were out shopping for stuff I needed for the trip I found a really nice pair of shades. They cost something like $15. My mom refused to buy them based on the belief that they were being taken to the airport, on a plane, on a bus, to a hotel, to a strange city for a week, worn by a perhaps absent-minded eighth grader surrounded by his at least as, and probably slightly more, absent-minded classmates. $15 was too much money to waste on glasses that would be lost before I even got on the plane. I argued my case, mostly with "I won't lose them!" but in the end she purchased me a pair of $5 glasses. Metallic green, black lenses, small X-games logo on either earpiece of the plastic so called "sports" frames (and this is back when the x-games were just starting out). So they were a little big for my tiny eighth grade cranium, not yet filled with the knowledge high school would try to cram in there and college would let seep out. They made me look like a bug. Giant bug eyes. But whatever, always one to make the best of any situation I wore them the whole trip, and was glad I had them, because Washington D.C. is sunny in the spring - but, the whole time, every day, I would think to myself, "mom thought I was going to lose the fifteen dollar sunglasses, I'll show her, I won't lose these, proving I did, in fact, deserve the more expensive pair." (That's almost an exact excerpt from my eighth grade brain, back then I thought with many dependent clauses). I didn't lose the glasses. I had them with me safe and sound when we returned to Boston. I kept them and wore them the following summer. I threw them on a shelf or someplace for the winter, and still had them the following summer, and so on...

Since my eighth grade year, and especially since my freshman year of college I've purchased many more pairs of sunglasses. Through it all I've kept the five dollar bug glasses. I've still got 'em. For the first few years they were my "I'm going to know where these are every moment of every day to make sure I don't lose them to prove mom wrong" glasses, later, they became the "junk" pair, the one's I'd wear if I thought there would be a danger of scratching, bending, breaking, or losing. Mountain biking, camping, vacations at the beach. I saved my other, nicer glasses for looking good, going out, weddings, birthdays, and so on. I've gone through maybe twenty pairs of "nice" glasses. I've still got the bug glasses.

I think, that if it ever happens, I'm going to be really upset if I lose them.

-Tom B-)

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