Happy Complainer

You know how when you’re driving along and then the sun gets in your eyes? Then you start to hold up your hand to block the sun from your eyes, which causes a noticeable amount of guilt for driving with only one hand on the wheel, and then you realize that some kind soul has previously experienced this very annoyance and danger and has invented a device to solve the sun-in-your-eyes problem: It’s The Sun Visor.

As grateful as I am for this third hand that blocks the sun without any third arm getting tired, I have some complaints about the standard solution. I would like to like my sun visor more but several things about it are not ideal. Here’s what I don’t like:

 

1. It doesn’t go low enough.

There’s some space below the lowest part of the sun visor where the sun can still get into my eyes. What am I supposed to do then? I still have to drive, and the sun is still in my eyes. This needs to be fixed. We need to be able to see out the window, of course, so the sun visor can’t block too much of the window, but it should be able to block the sun wherever the sun is and right now it can’t because it doesn’t go low enough.

 

2. The way that it goes lower is a little weird.

When I want to make the sun visor go higher or lower, I push it away from me or I pull it towards me. That is, it goes up and down by going forward and backward. Why doesn’t it go up and down by going up and down? Why can’t I just pull it down when I want it to go down and push it up when I want it to go up? That would be more natural.

 

3. When I need to move the sun visor the side to block the sun coming in from the side window, I have to move my head out of the way.

True story. I have to move my head. Me. I don’t see why I should have to move my head. I was here first. I don’t have to move out of the way when I turn the radio on. Or the windshield wipers. Or when I roll down the window. Why does The Sun Visor make me move out of its way?

 

4. When I’m on a slightly windy road and the sun goes back and forth between the front window and the side window, then I have to keep moving the sun visor between the front and side windows.

And I have to keep moving my head out of the way each time I move the visor. If the sun is in front of me and it moves a little to the left or a little to the right, it’s no big deal—one visor position blocks the sun’s small movements. But when the sun is near the corner of the car and it moves a little to the left or a little to the right, then I need to move the sun visor from the front to the side or from the side to the front. Either that or I leave it where it is and move my head forward or backward so that the sun visor is still blocking the sun from my view. Both of those options require more effort than just sitting there, doing nothing, and letting the sun visor do its job. If the sun visor were on a track like a sliding door instead of pivoting at the corner of the car, then I could just slide it over so that the center of the sun visor was at the corner of the car and then when the sun moved a little to the left or a little to the right of the corner of the car, I could just sit there and say, “Gee, isn’t this sun visor nice.”

 

5. It’s sort of hard to take out of the hinge.

When I need to move the sun visor from the front window to the side window, it’s sort of hard to get the visor out of its hinge. I always have to kind of brace myself first and then yank it out, and then move it to the side. And then when I want to move it back to the front, I usually don’t put it back in its hinge because I might have to take it out again later and since yanking it out of its hinge is a minor ordeal, I want to avoid it. But then in the meantime if I want to make it go higher or lower, I do that by pushing it forward or pulling it backward and neither of those actions is as easy to do when it’s not in its hinge. I might pull it towards me because I want it to go up and it might start rotating to the side because it’s not in its hinge. Yes, I’m really complaining about all this stuff.

 

6. It’s difficult to block the sun when the sun is on the other side of the car.

I can take care of blocking the sun on my side of the car—in front of me and to the left of me—but half the time the sun comes in from in front of the passenger side or to the right of the passenger side. There’s another sun visor over there that’s easy for a passenger to reach but it’s hard for the driver to reach, and if the driver is driving without passengers, then she will have to try to do this herself. It might be easier just to close your right eye.

 

6 1/2. The sun visor sometimes hits my rear view mirror and then I have to reposition my rear view mirror.

I guess this is just due to someone not measuring quite right, so I’ll only count this as a half a complaint but when you’ve worked so hard to get the rear view mirror to just the right place, it’s annoying that that work can be undone in one swift inadvertent sun-blocking motion.

 

So: Someone With More Power Than I, please go fix all this and make A Better Sun Visor. I promise you that someone out here will care.

Thank you.

 

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