Everyone around me is surprised when I say that I don't need sunglasses.
The reason for such disbelief probably comes from the reason of my light complexion and light eye color, because, "Light eyes are more sensitive to the sun?"
It's true that bright eyes let more light through the cornea, so bright eyes get an amount of light earlier that creates an unpleasant feeling and makes us squint. And thus they actually prevent the penetration of too much UV rays into the eye itself.
Which would basically mean that people with light eyes actually protect their eyes better when there is too much light.
But there is something strange about me, because, despite the fact that I have bright eyes, the sun does not bother me for the most part.
Maybe it bothers me when I find myself on a big, white snow-covered surface, but since I'm not a skier, such situations don't happen at all 🙂
The only situation when sunglasses are comfortable for me is the morning or midday sun, when it's close to the horizon and I'm behind the wheel. Then I need good visibility, so glasses are often necessary.
Are you wondering why I am writing this? So to justify myself, why won't my collection be big this time 🙂
My collection is not large, not for the reasons that other sunglasses users may have - often losing or breaking them, but for the reason that I don't buy them.
But even when I buy them, like these few pieces I have, I make sure that they come with polarized lenses and with adequate UV protection, in order to protect my eyes, when dark lenses reduce the need to close my eyes.
One, the model that is also on my profile picture, is Polaroid, with very dark lenses (category 3 out of 4), which let in 8-18% of light with 100% UV protection and which I wear if I find myself in the snow, which almost never happens and mostly on sunny summer days, in strong sunlight.
Since I'm not a slave to branded items, I don't choose any sound brands for myself, because Polaroids like these, in the budget version, get the job done for me, and they have models that resemble some other, much more famous ones (Ray Ban).
Once I listened to my partner and bought myself brand glasses. We were on a cruise in the Adriatic Sea, and since I went on the trip without glasses, I had to buy them. In the store on the ship, there were a lot of models, and since the whole ship is one big duty-free zone, all the models were "a little cheaper".
These Guess glasses, back in 2013, cost me €89. Far from affordable, for glasses, by my standards. But well, they helped me then, because on that cruise I would have fainted, how strong the sun was on the deck of the ship and while we were walking around the towns on the Adriatic coast.
I wore them later for a long time, until unfortunately they were not damaged. You guessed it, someone sat on them 😂
It happens that I go on a trip without deliberately bringing my glasses. I always do that when I leave for Spain.
I do this because I know that in Spain, in any city I happen to be in, there are many Ale-Hop shops, which offer a large selection of sunglasses, so it is not worthwhile for me to carry one from Belgrade. I buy them in Ale-Hop, so if they survive to come back to Serbia with me, I add them to my "skinny" collection. It's the same with these glasses, which cost me a whole €10.
And I also have a pair of glasses, which I bought in a market next to the beach, when I forgot my beach glasses in the hotel room.
I've been looking to get them as cheap as possible and I can bet that they don't have any UV protection, so I almost never wear them. But they stayed with me, I was sorry to throw them away.
Because what kind of #hivecollector would I be if I didn't keep small items like this, even those that have almost no value, but they remind me of where I was when I bought them 🙂
To complement this post a bit, I will also share with you a few pieces of my partner's sunglasses.
She buys them much more often than I do and wears them almost every day (which is probably the reason for buying them more often, because she loses or breaks them more often 🙂) She, for example, has dark eyes, but the sunlight bothers her a lot and she can't be found on the street on a sunny day without sunglasses... It's strange, but it's true.
My bright eyes, depending on the color of the environment I find myself in, or the color of the clothes I wear, can be shades of gray, green or blue, and sometimes, when it's sunny and I don't wear glasses, their color comes out even more. I tried to take a photo of one eye. But I wouldn't want to scare you, I didn't sleep well so there would be too many capillaries in the picture 🙂 and I wouldn't want to reveal my biometrics completely.
I hope that in the end you liked my collection of glasses, which @mipiano chose for October, and that the information from the beginning of the post about eye color and the strength of the sun was useful to you. Maybe some of you, who have darker eyes, after reading this post of mine, will still decide to buy glasses with good UV protection, in order to protect your eyes and thus start collecting sunglasses for your collection.
