Go get yourself some cheap sunglasses
This might shock those of you who know me, but I'm not the kind of guy who spends a lot of money on sunglasses — or clothes or restaurants or vehicles or golf courses or technology or tequila or the prescriptions the doctor thinks might keep me alive.
Some folks — including my son, wife and friends — have gone so far as to call me “cheap,” while I prefer such terms as “frugal” or “not as gullible as you other folks.”
But of all my frugality, I guess the closest thing to truly cheap is my taste in sunglasses. Ever since Tom Cruise burst onto the scene in the 1980s with movies like “Top Gun,” expensive shades have been one of America's most iconic status symbols. I've had friends say things like:
“Hey, Chris, check out these cool 18-karat gold-rimmed aviators! Set me back $3,000 but totally worth it.”
This is when I am supposed to respond something like, “Hey, whatever makes you happy,” but instead it usually comes out something like, “Are you stupid?” But I mean that in the most polite way, as in showing a great concern for whether their judgment might truly be impaired from watching reality TV or reading Tweets all day.
You can also blame ZZ Top for my taste in sunglasses. I wasn't a huge fan of the group back in the day because I had a fear of guys with long beards who weren't named Santa, but their song “Cheap Sunglasses” has a pretty catchy groove to it. Perhaps they are the ones who planted the seed about preferring cheap sunglasses. Fortunately, they didn't succeed with trying to make me a “Sharp-Dressed Man” in a later hit. By then, all forms of cheapness had taken hold, and there was no chance of my ever becoming a sharp-dressed man. If they'd have come out with a song called “Half-Dressed Man,” I might still be listening to ZZ Top today.
Fortunately, cheap sunglasses are not hard to find. In fact, my latest pair came from one of those stores where everything costs 99 cents — or if I'm feeling fancy one of those stores where everything costs a dollar. Those are my favorite stores for purchasing important household items like plastic flamingos and bouncy balls. I can shop for several minutes at a time in those stores, which is a few minutes longer than I spend in any other store. Of course, one of the reasons I spend so long in there is because I like to go up to the folks running the cash register and ask, “Excuse me, can I get a price check on this pack of spicy beef sticks?” The look on their face when they say “a dollar” is worth at least 99 cents.
I'm sure some folks — probably the ones who sell expensive sunglasses — will argue that cheap sunglasses lack some necessary protections for the eyes and don't filter out all the dangerous UV rays that can damage vision or the gamma rays that can turn you into the Incredible Hulk. But the guys from ZZ Top seem to be doing just fine, although they apparently can't see well enough to shave.
The main reason I wear cheap sunglasses, though, was evident this past week at the beach, where I misplaced my sunglasses every five minutes. Instead of buying these cheap sunglasses one pair at a time, I'm going to start buying about a dozen at a time and scattering them throughout all the places I travel in the world, including every room of my home.
Unfortunately, I only had that one pair at the beach. Sure enough, I wound up permanently misplacing them at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean while trying to wash sunscreen off of them. A wave knocked them out of my slimy-with-sunscreen hands, and they were never seen again. Now, somewhere between here and Africa is a pair of one-dollar sunglasses rolling around the sea floor — or perhaps one really cool-looking tuna.
Connect with Chris Johnson at KudzuKid.com.
This story was originally published June 18, 2018 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Go get yourself some cheap sunglasses."