The Raybans Remain

This is the tale of my sunglasses; a pair of ancient Ray Ban Wayfarer's that I think may be the reincarnation of someone important to me because I can't seem to lose them; it's as if they need me as much as I need them.

My ex-husband gave them to me maybe 2 decades ago. I know I wore them back in the late 80s, when we lived in Spokane. I have a picture of myself sporting my Rayban's in the park across the street from our house on the South Hill.  But, I guess when they went out of style, I put them away in my jewelry box.

They sat in that jewelry box for a long time, and moved with us all over the Northwest. It was a very cool holder-of-things from Ikea, bought in the early '80s when we lived in Southern California. My Rayban glasses sat for years, along with some rarely worn, beautiful jewelry, a few Olympic pins, and the varnished penis bone of a bear, gifted to me by my brother in Alaska.

Back in 1991, after my head injury, my ex found them and had a prescription put in them for a trip to the Arizona sunshine. My eyesight was fine before my brain injury, but the hard knock my head took damaged my brain stem, and it controls sight. Two surgeries later, the double vision I suffer from remains, but my pupils are lined up better. I say better, because my left eye ball still has a tendency to wander even though I wore a prescription that worked to bring the two images I see together. But, after several years they said the images were just too far apart, and gave up. They had that old prescription, so back to my jewelry they went, tucked in safe, beside the penis bone. They were just too cool to get rid of.

When I started coaching in Boise, I uncovered them again and wore them a lot. But, one of the coaches I worked with told me he could see my eyes, as I rolled them at his comments. You'd think I would have known this, before being told, wouldn't you? Well, I didn't, and I'd rather people not be able to see that, so they were sent back to the box.

Then, when I came to Kalispell and started coaching, I resurrected them. I noticed my fashion savvy daughter wearing ginormous sunglasses, so I assumed they were back in style. My new husband even had an eye doc verify it was OK for me to wear them with that very, very old prescription. It was.

So now they are always with me, and I've tried real hard to misplace, or break them. My co-coach Marie found them in the street at KMS, they fall off my shirt collar into traffic while riding my bike, I leave them on the bar at Moose's, on the counter in Target, and they sometimes go missing for days. But, I always find them, in the end.

I even have plans to have dark lenses, with my current prescription, put in. I'm thinking my Rayban's should last another 20 years, at least.