When my grandson and I visit Hitter's Edge in Whitehall, we always finish by window-shopping in the store. I usually just buy one $3 backyard hardball, but we always love to look at the different bats, gloves, jerseys, caps and other baseball equipment available. DeMarini Big Barrels, Easton Stealths - all the bats under lock and key in the chain stores - are just sitting there, begging to be swung. There are beautiful wooden bats on display, too, inviting you to try them out.Over the weekend, we were checking out the merchandise like we always do, when it suddenly dawned on me that sunglasses might help my grandson on the diamond. I had a little extra money burning a hole in my pocket. Dat quickly found a pair he liked, $30 Easton eyewear that says it's "100% UV protective" with "shatterproof polycarbonate lenses." Cool. They weigh less than an ounce and my grandson was particularly impressed by the pouch, which contains a strap and little cleaning cloth.
He wore them to his game on Saturday, which was rained out after one inning.
When his mother saw them, she claimed I had just wasted $30, but I piously told her that sunglasses are essential to healthy eyes. After I got home, I quickly looked it up on the Internet's Library of Alexandria, Google. Sure enough, there is some study somewhere to back me up. Unless you wear sunglasses, you'll get cataracts, macular degeneration, then your eyes pop out and you die. Something like that.
Google taught me that May is actually UV awareness month, and Business Week reports children are "particularly vulnerable to the harmful ultraviolet A and B (UVA and UVB) damage that can accompany sun exposure."
So wearing shades has nothing to do with looking cool. It's for healthy eyes, damn it.
Tonight Dat wore them during his entire game in Lower Nazareth against the Athletics, except when he was batting. After the game was over, and it as beginning to get dark, he wore them home. His mom later emailed me to tell me he's walking around the block, still wearing his shades, hoping someone notices him.
I think I'll get a pair tomorrow. Aviator glasses. It's too late to help my eyes, but I can try to pretend I'm cool, too.
6 comments:
Bernie- Thanks for the public health announcement. I'll bet 3/4's of the readers had no idea. It's amazing how many things around us cause us harm and we aren't even aware of them. Imagine how healthy we would be if we were aware of all of these things and had the skills to appropriately deal with them (or in some cases, stop them).
Bernie:
Dat looks cool with or without the sunglasses! He is lucky to have such a "cool" Grandpa who care for him!
"I'll bet 3/4's of the readers had no idea."
Actually, I had no idea, whih is probably why I am slowlygoing blind.
So if someone was noticing a sharp increase in vision-related problems and did some investigating, he/she might learn that the general belief that "its' just people getting old" might not be true. There might be a real environmental cause behind population wide vision problems that could be changed with a public health intervention.
Now apply that principle to lung disease (not just smoking related), heart disease (not just eating related), cancers and other chronic illnesses that aren't always behavior related and affect all (not just the poor). This is why we need more public health instead of more expensive health care.
Those are Allentown thug glasses. Not a good career path to set the kid on. In a few years he will be trolling the Atown streets with his thug glasses and timberlands.
Those are Easton baseball glasses, designed specifically to protect his eyes while engaged in sports. I'm extremely comfortable with his career path and you are a bigot.
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