I suspect anthropologists thousands of years hence will get a big belly laugh how Americans dressed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Many a time I’ve sat in my truck at a light, watching a parade of what looks to be prison escapees lolling through the crosswalk. Grown men strut by, wearing cut-offs that scarcely hide their butt cracks, white knee socks, shaved heads and T-shirts big enough to hide a family of 12 in safely.
These aren’t gang members. They’re 40-year-old certified public accountants.
Not that long ago, The Reuters news agency warned that flip-flops, those sandals formerly warn to the beach or poolside, could be a danger to your career.
I doubt that.
More and more, people in the work place dress like they’re 46 beers into a New Orleans summer frat party.
I remember interviewing a guy for a reporter’s job and he showed up sockless, in flip-flops, T-shirt and worn knee-length cut-offs. I considered just giving the lad the heave-ho onto front lawn, but, alas, there wasn’t much to grab onto. Besides. It was cheap theater to see just how he was going to talk me into a job dressed like a homeless skaterboarder. I could scarcely conceal my grin when he asked: “Do you check, like, back references?”
My response was sincere and immediate.
“Not in your case.”
Granted. There are instances, like you’re in Bangladesh and are off for a morning traipse to visit the U.N. powdered milk delivery, where you’d want to wear flip-flops — or zories, as they used to be called.
But for me, when the air conditioning repairman comes a-calling, I don’t want to see his big, huge, blue, diseased, disfigured, rolled-up discolored Sunday London Times size 14 feet twitching like twin creatures from a science fiction movie.
It makes me feel as if America were slowly slipping into its own Mad Max movie.
Women have prettier feet than guys, granted. Still. If I’m dealing with a girl vice-president of corporate affairs in 39-cent sandals that just 20 minutes earlier were plastic shopping bags — that would be the sandals, not the veep — it leaves me with the impression that said exec is as deep as a motel vending machine bag of potato chips.
The other ridiculous end of the stick used to be high heels. Women looked great in them. But the back pain accompanying also caused the fairer sex to grab their lower back and walk like Quasimoto when no one was looking.
I just started out to say that I’m not asking everyone to walk around dressed like Cary Grant or Grace Kelly, then, I stopped myself.
Why not be your own, personal, Cary Grant or Grace Kelly?
Why not ask everyone to take a moment, look up the words, “style” and “panache” and, at least for a moment or two, sparkle?
My dopey sister-like substance Lesley Anne once said this, completing her statement with that great smile of hers and an actual 360-degree twirl:
“Life’s a stage. Have many fun costumes.”
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net