He wears his sunglasses at night, but not during the day

Ever since I first met my friend Andrew 35 years ago, I always felt there was something not quite right with him. For instance, he would show up for classes which generally started at 9, around 7.30 in the morning. And when I made the mistake of asking him why, his answer was baffling.

“Suppose one day,” he tried to explain to me, “Mrs Brown turned up early for class because, oh I don’t know, she couldn’t sleep that well because her pet raccoon kept her awake. It was running a high fever and so she decided to show up at class early and begin teaching early. I would be the only one there and so I would have her complete attention.”

Yes, that made complete sense. “Has that ever happened?” I asked adding quicky before Andrew decided to go off on a tangent. “As far as I know its never happened because I’ve been in school every day.”
“Not the day you were sick,” he quickly interjected and I was stumped. Yes, indeed there had been one day, only one day, when I had not gone to school because I was sick. Now if I pursued this conversation to its illogical conclusion, Andrew would tell me that it happened that day. It was time to cut my losses and move on to bigger and better subjects, whatever they might be.

“What temperature was Mrs Brown’s raccoon running the night she couldn’t sleep?”
“I’ve no idea,” he admitted, “I don’t know if she has a raccoon.” My bad. I knew I shouldn’t have continued the insane conversation. Note to self, don’t do that again.

Andrew and I went through every class together for the next ten years during which time we became hard and fast friends. Inseparable is what most thought we were, and when we applied for colleges we applied to the same colleges but weren’t accepted by the same colleges. In fact, I went off to London to study music and Andrew went to York to study chemical engineering.

We didn’t see each other much, only during summer vacations as in the winter he went off camping with his parents to the Lake District which was snow bound. Whereas I went to the south of France which wasn’t. However, during the summer we spent a lot of time together. What was interesting though was as the years progressed and we grew older we also grew apart from each other. Andrew was the first one to get a girlfriend, who actually lived around the corner from him, while I met a girl the following winter in Calais as she was on the same train when I was going to the south of France. She lived in Monte Carlo, so we didn’t see each other that much but talked a lot on the phone. However, one summer Francine came to Oxford to spend time with me.

She stayed at the Wise Alderman because my parents didn’t have enough room in their house to accommodate her, plus they didn’t trust her to the extent my father said, “you know what French girls are like. The next thing you know she’s pregnant and you’re married. That’s why they eat raw garlic, the Frenchmen do. To keep the French girls away so they don’t fall into the same trap as the English boys.” Made sense to me. So, Francine stayed at the Wise Alderman which was owned by my uncle, where she ran up a huge bar bill getting drunk every night because she didn’t have far to go. The only problem was that I had to pay it.

“It’s a man’s job,” she said and then looked strangely at me. “Why are you recently smelling like raw garlic?” she added and I pleaded innocence. “You Englishmen are strange sometimes. Your friend, you know Andrew,” she said one night when we were sitting outside on the bank of the Oxford Canal with our beers. “He wears his sunglasses at night, but not during the day.”

That was news to me, I had never noticed. “Oh,” I replied and made a mental note to myself to ask him the next I saw him, which would be in about 5 minutes because I saw him drive up in his dilapidated mini and open the door for Janet his girlfriend. The door nearly came off in his hands though. And yes, as he came closer and the outside lights of the Wise Alderman illuminated the couple, I did notice him wearing sunglasses in the pitch dark. After we welcomed them and they joined us, Andrew still had his sunglasses on. “Why?” I asked regretting my question immediately as I pointed to his face.

“Why what?” he replied and then surmised I was talking about his sunglasses. He laughed carelessly and took them off. “I guess I don’t need to wear them anymore, the sun must’ve gone in for its nap.”
Sorry, but I had to follow up with the most logical question which was, “do you wear them during the day?”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted with a stupid smile, “I forget to.”
I looked at Francine who gave me that look which meant, ‘let’s talk about something else,’ and I nodded my head in agreement.

“It’s better than you eating raw garlic every day!” Andrew had to have the last word on the subject though.

“Anyone for another beer?” I asked as Francine glared at me.