Sunglasses

I lost a pair of prescription sunglasses when I was back home in Arkansas for Christmas. The last time I remember wearing them was when I paid a visit to my middle sister’s house. We went outside so she could show me a walking trail that her husband had recently cleared on their property, and I had to shield my precious eyeballs from the sun.

We kept referring to the trail as a “trell,” either because we were poking fun at how people say that word in our diphthong-deprived dialect or because we have mocked that pronunciation so many times it has now become how we ourselves say the word. Drawing that distinction gets difficult in the South sometimes. I have written about this before.

That same sister and I have joked about taking someone from our state on a whale-watching cruise. Spotting a pair of flukes in the distance, this Arkansan would exclaim, “I see the tell of a whell! Is it a mell’s or a femell’s? Who on this sellboat can regell us with tells of whell genitellia?”

The day after the trell outing, I realized that I no longer had my sunglasses in my possession. Who knows what happened to them. I have trouble holding onto certain items, including sunglasses, hats, gloves, scarves, and umbrellas.

You know that advice Coco Chanel supposedly gave about shedding an accessory before leaving the house? I do that, but after leaving the house.

Another thing I always seem to lose—and I know this doesn’t count as a fashion accessory—is the ticket you’re given when you check a bag or coat at a bar or restaurant. The little piece of paper must get mixed up with drink receipts or something and then accidentally discarded. I frequently have to tip the coat check worker extra in order to fund an extended search for my belongings so that I can go home.

At a gay bar in Dublin once, a worker told me that since I’d lost my ticket I would have to wait until everyone else had retrieved their stuff after closing time at 3am. My attempts to cajole and tip my way out of the predicament had no effect whatsoever. Apparently, the legendary Irish friendliness is a less powerful force than universal homosexual bitchiness.

I ended up surrendering my tote bag and leaving anyway. A more combative bargoer might have kicked that pitiless coat-check leprechaun right in the lucky charms, but I knew violence is never the answer. Besides, I was in a foreign country. Who would bell me out of jell?

This month I finally got around to replacing the sunglasses I lost in December. The tinted lenses in the new pair, which I ordered at a Warby Parker store, align with the latest prescription from my eye doctor.

It so happens that I don’t need progressive lenses yet for reading, but I’m in the any-day-now age cohort for that. Since I already wear glasses to see anything about 6 inches beyond my nose, I assume progressive lenses (basically, no-line bifocals, for those of you unfamiliar with vision woes) will be what I opt for when I can no longer see up close as well.

Otherwise, I’d have to keep switching between my regular glasses and readers, and you know what that would mean: more misplaced accessories scattered in my wake.

Maybe the wisest course of action is to make peace with loss. First your glasses go missing and then your eyesight goes and before long everything else goes too. That’s just how life, well, goes. If you want a happy ending, I suggest you read a fairy tell.