I just gotta wear shades

Anyone getting excited for guest poster? I am. 3 more days.

While we wait I went to Mesquite, Nevada the other day with my boss right in the middle of the afternoon. It was a quick trip, we ate at my favorite Mesquite place, Los Lupes Mexican Restaurant. I had the Chile Relleno.

In the afternoon we were walking this empty lot with a client; since I am no real estate agent, I was doing my best to feign interest in the discussion. It was near 90° and there was not a tree for miles. I was not that hot temperature wise, just my normal hot good lookin wise, but I could not look at anything without squinting. There was a glare reflecting off of everything in that concrete jungle. I began, after a few minutes, to make a teepee with my hands to shield my eyes from the glare that was just bouncing off of everything. I am sure I looked very professional. I soon noticed that all the rich guys, which was everyone there but me, had sunglasses on and no one else was making a hand teepee.

I started taking an informal survey around town and a good 60%-75% of people driving on the road during the day wear sunglasses. I am hardly in the majority being what you might call anti-sunglasses. It should be easy to see why I am this way though, many people that wear sunglasses that I see on a day to day basis are kind of full of themselves. And when I developed this bias 20 years ago it was much worse. If you had a mullet in the late 80's you also had those neon colored pink or green oakley sunglasses and 99 times out of 100 you were a jerk. And right now would have been a great place to put an internet picture of those sweet shades but I could not find one anywhere. Did anyone take a picture of those sunglasses back in 89? I defy anyone that thinks of themselves as internet savy to find me a picture of those glasses, you know the ones I am talking about.

So I was in a store a few days later and there was a rack with sunglasses. Buy one pair for $9.99 and get another pair half off so I took the sunglass plunge. There are those out there to whom I now owe an apology. I have a long and storied career of making fun of people wearing sunglasses. If I have ever said to you "easy hollywood" or "man you are good looking but not as good looking as YOU think you are" to you I guess I now apologize. Of course, if you were indoors with your sunglasses on when I said it then I take back the apology and you are back to jerk status. I still have my principles.

I don't like that I am sunglass guy now, I hate it. I feel self-conscious and feel like I am trying to be cool but I am not a young man anymore. As I make long drives in the middle of the day I get bad headaches. When I go to work I drive east from home where the sun rises and drive home to where the sun sets and sometimes I can't see anything and it is dangerous.

So I did it, I bought not one pair but two, what do you want from me? The reasons to buy outweighed the reasons not to buy. I bought the first pair I tried on because I looked like Tom Cruise in Top Gun:

Both pairs are exactly the same, one is an exciting "back up pair" for the time in a few days when I lose the first. If these make my sight better, give me less headaches, and all I have to do is look cool and have more chicks checking me out, it is well worth it I guess. Probably sad it took me this long to make the move.