Vuarnet sunglasses remind me of the unattainable and effortlessly beautiful girls of high school. They came from Rockliffe Park, these girls, and they could all stroke a backhand with confidence and ease. They’d been to Europe and never seemed to need braces. They applied Aveda moisturizing lotion to their skin instead of Clearasil and Acnomel, like the rest of us, and they were as holy and perfect to me as Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly.
I wanted to be a part of their tribe, but I lived in the wrong neighbourhood. Where I lived, we chose cross-country skiing, because it was more affordable, over the sexy downhill.. And so I watched as the girls I loved returned to school on Monday. Wind-burned, they wore Ralph Lauren sweaters and spoke of the après-ski parties they attended up at Tremblant. And they, like the mysterious lives they lived, were concealed behind Vuarnet sunglasses.
On occasion, a sympathetic person would let me wear their glasses over lunch, and I swear to God that they transformed the world. Everything became clearer and more cinematic. Colours were sharper, and I always felt invulnerable behind them. I would lean against the school and strike a pose of natural confidence, but I could never pull it off. I was a thin boy who was always too embarrassed to take off his shirt in public. The glasses were too large for my narrow face, and they made my eyes looked bulbous, like an insect. At a glance, you could see the want radiating out of me.
The other night, while at a friend’s for dinner, the host gave me a pair of vintage Vuarnet sunglasses that he’d happened upon. He’d heard me speak of them, and thought that I’d get a kick out of them, now that I’ve traveled 20 years from high school.
When I put the glasses on at the dinner table, I returned to the past. It’s funny how memory works. The other week, I opened a package of baseball cards from 1990, and was immediately transported in time, recalling small details from my life that somehow connected to the name of a baseball player I had long since forgotten. And so it was with the Vuarnets. With unanticipated clarity I saw people and moments that I didn’t even remember had existed.
There was Richard, always wearing a yellow sweater to school, who died years later while working in the oil fields of Alberta. Friendless Chung Duy, who was always the last kid standing in dodge ball–silent and quick as lightning. Marcia and Fateema, who always sent one another chocolate hearts on Valentine’s Day, so that they didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of being passed over, yet again. And all the crushes, confessed and hidden in the pages of a yearbook, written small, so as to carry less risk.
Lord, we were all so beautiful.
Truly, so very beautiful.