fashion trendsetting

I have more of a sturdy, peasant build than a willowy heroin-chic build, so that means I'm never mistaken for a model or even the slightly less glam "fashion editor". (No regrets, when the end times come and my slighter friends fade away to nothing, I'll still be plugging along). But I do seem to be a fashion trendsetter.

Sometimes my trendsetting takes years to catch on, sometimes it happens more quickly.

Examples:

1. I bought a pair of combat trousers on my honeymoon in Little Rock, Arkansas at a military surplus store in 1997. Within a year, combats were de rigeur.
2. Asymetrical haircuts - I had mine before Madonna. (That cow is always copying me, just remember I had a funky British husband first.)
   
3. Tattoos - when I did it, it was trashy, now all the young people have them.
4. Cowboy boots in London. It's part of my schtick - now you see it everywhere.
5. Furry hats and folk embroidery. Oh yes, I was wearing dead animals on my head last year - now the "Russian look" is the cutting edge of fashion.

However, when it comes to eyewear I am a follower of fashion. I hate wearing glasses, so I don't like to draw attention by taking a fashion risk. When I bought my last pair of glasses, they were the small, sleek rectangular sort that you see in all the optometrists. Sadly, I broke my glasses when I was in San Francisco. I don't know how I did it, but I woke up rather disoriented in the night and by morning there were my glasses, less one lens, resting in shards of optical plastic.

I tried to get a new pair in California, but due to the no doubt powerful optomestrists' lobby in the Golden State, it is not possible to get another pair of glasses without an expensive eye test. It is apparently illegal. My friend K drove me to several places in Silicon Valley, but none would read my prescription off the remaining lens. We were given the name of an underground, independent optometrist who was rumored to provide black-market, no-test glasses, but we didn't make it there. (When the Vol-in-Law broke his glasses, he was able to get a new pair without the eye test as a "courtesy" in Lawrenceburg, TN)

I went without my glasses in CA, and countered the eye-strain headaches with naproxen sodium, ibuprofen, alcohol and a determination not to look at anything in the middle distance.

When we got to Vegas, VolMom presented me with a pair of my glasses from high school. Yes, the large round 80s glasses. Her habit of keeping everything from a misplaced sense of sentimentality really paid off.

OK - the glasses look something like this:














But at least I could see well enough to drive at night. And they do make me look really young, like a fresh young thing from the 80s.

Several colleagues have noticed my new eyewear, but no one has complimented me on them. The conversation goes like this:

Q: Are those new glasses?
Me: No, they're really old.
Q: Oh.

Anyway, I'm wondering if I can just get away with wearing them. Even though I can get free eye tests as a fringe benefit from my work, it's still a pain going, getting the test and picking out the glasses, never mind the expense. And maybe - given my previous track record they'll come back into fashion. My suggestion to all of you four-eyes is to ransack your parents' houses and pull out the big boxy-glasses. They're coming back.