Squinting On Sunny Days

There's something oddly unsettling about people wearing sunglasses. It is commonly spoken that one's eyes are the windows to the soul, and I quite like looking someone in the windows when I speak to them. But in the summertime when the weather is high, and you can stretch right up and touch the sky, the barriers of tinted lenses show up and adorn the faces of millions. The only problem with the content of that paragraph is that this isn't summer, just a very sunny spring.

Harsh cold weather lasts longer than it's supposed to now, meaning that any nanosecond where the sun shines is an excuse to crack out the deck chairs and disposable barbecues. Personally, I find that slapping on some Factor 50 and listening to Spanish folk-pop is a much more appropriate way to celebrate the advent of warmth, provided I can also include deck chairs and disposable barbecues. For the many, however, sunglasses are donned as well, which I find not so much scary as I find it bizarre.

As I mentioned earlier and am lazily trying to connect back to here, it's natural to look a person in the eyes when engaged in one-on-one chatter whilst the rest of the face is relegated to peripheral vision. However, when the eyes are covered up by your conversational adversary (purely out of selfishness, like their viewing receptacles need to be protected from the harsh light rays or whatever), you're suddenly locked in communication with two large, dark brown squares, rectangles or ovals depending on their preferred style of frame. Oh crap, that was really long. Basically, what I'm saying is "you can't see the eyes anymore". Instead, that rest-of-the-face bit that was once just an additional part of them is now all you have to go on.

Ever heard the phrase "their eyes were smiling"? Well as far as I know, eyes aren't crescent-shaped, nor do they have the ability to grow mouths of their own to use for the purposes of displaying amusement or happiness. It's difficult to describe, but there's a certain look in the eyes that just tells us when somebody is happy, sad, thinking, relaxed or albino. If the rest of the face was to be completely covered, as opposed to being simply peripheral, we'd instantly be able to determine if a person was smiling or not. Bringing shades into the equation just reverses the functions or the variables or whatever and I start misusing mathematical terminology. Suddenly, the eyes become static sheets of (usually) plastic and the rest of the face's features twist and contort into various shapes to denote how amused or bemused or angry or bangry a person is. Unless, of course, they're albino, in which case they wouldn't be out in strong sunlight in the first place.

I've not worn sunglasses for years, despite owning a prescription pair. That probably can't be good for me. I have no working knowledge of how corrective lenses actually function, other than the fact that without them I can't see nearly as well as I can when I do wear them. In any situation, I'd proclaim they function correctly based on nothing but pure magic. But in actuality, my ignorant mind thinks that there's got to be some kind of "magnifying glass"-like aspects going on there. This essentially means that when I wear normal glasses in strong sunlight, the light is magnified in my eyes, burning out my corneas and - slowly but surely - blinding me, and no amount of squinting on sunny days is ever going to stop that. Essentially, I should really wear the tinted pair that I own. But like I said, it's been years since I've worn sunglasses. My natural eyesight is much worse these days, possibly because of too much sunlight, too much squinting or not enough magic. My sunglasses were made according to a previous prescription some years ago, meaning that when I put them over my eyes, not only does everything go darker than I'm used too, but also slightly blurrier than I'm used to.

Is there really a point to all this? Well, no, really. Other than the observation that people sort of look alien-like when wearing shades (especially ladies who wear those giant ones that look like dinner plates on the eyes that wrap around the sides of the face and forces them to do pouty lips, I mean what the hell, humanity? Come on, you're better than this). To be honest, I suppose I could've just written that last line and not bothered with the rest of the babble prior to it. But screw you, I want to feel like I've done something worthy and lengthy and that before I go outside and squint the day away.