It started with the Cassidy brothers, of course. When we all met up in the courtyard of my old workplace in DC to load the van, one of them pulled the Serengeti drivers off his own face and put them on me, “for the look.” Brown gradient aviator-looking shades, half Elvis and half Delaware Avenue club-boy, but it was in the spirit of things. And my bachelor party went up to AC, and everybody cashed, and when I got back to California, I took my ill-gotten loot and bought a pair of Ray-Ban wire-frames with polarized amber lenses.
It wasn’t until I wore them on the honeymoon that I realized what a difference they made. The amber is for high-contrast and the polarizing reduces glare, and the result was that everything – especially green – just popped. The hills of the Cotswolds, the gardens of Bath, everything was in high-definition. When I got home, I went back to the blue Oakleys and saved the ambers for when I needed the rose-colored effect…life literally looked better through those.
Eventually I crunched the Oakleys in a moving accident, and went to the ambers full-time. I can never keep the special stuff special; it always turns into everyday wear eventually. And then, the following June, I sat on the ambers. Idiot. So they went somewhere safe, because I couldn’t well dispose of them. And it was hot as hell, no sign of fog, summer being typical depressing summer. And I finally threw my hands in the air, drove to Stanford Shopping Center, bought a pair of Wayfarers in tortoise with the polarized amber lenses, and then just drove up 280 until I could see fog again. I just needed hope. And within a day or two the heat broke and 2006 went on to be a great year.
I’m still wearing those glasses. I have the plain black Wayferers for color-neutral wear, bought when the ambers went missing for a couple of months, and they are the daily-wear ones. And I have a new pair of the tortoise-ambers, in a slightly larger size, which are for special occasions only. But the original tortoise amber Wayferers are on right now, out by the BBQ smoker. The trees are vibrant green and the world has that golden glow, and right now, everything is all right.