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Out of Fashion

The Source

This is a story about fashion, a topic about which I know practically nothing. Other people joke about having bellbottoms and wingtips in their closet. I actually have them and if either would fit I’d wear them. My mother was fashionable, my Dad is still a clotheshorse, and my brother the banker is dressed well by his wife. I have no idea what happened to me. I guess it’s like when my students would give me the excuse, “I forgot to do it, Mr. Bradbury,” and I’d respond with, “It’s not a matter of remembering, it’s a matter of caring.” I guess I don’t care enough. However, when you teach a Lincoln Land class of fashionable young ladies you start hearing things . . .you start noticing things. . . you get the feeling that you’re being watched and evaluated. One day during rehearsal I noticed that they were staring at my feet. I was wearing my Birkenstock sandals with white socks. We have an honest relationship with each other so I asked what was wrong. One girl finally said, “Socks with sandals?” I asked what was the matter with that and she tried to back out of the conversation mumbling something about a retirement home. Argh. I’d been stabbed in the foot by the fashion knife! Last summer I took a trip to Alaska and my roommate was a young man who liked to walk. . . and walk and walk. . .so I walked with him. I didn’t log it daily, but I’m pretty sure we walked the entire length of the state. When I got home my arches had completely collapsed and Carrie, the wound specialist at Passavant told me that I needed to stop buying cheap shoes. So . . . I went to a real shoe store and bought a pair of sneakers with a large “N” on the side. When I arrived at class the next day the girls said things like “Nice shoes!” and “Cool!” All this because of the “N,” I guess. I made a mental note to buy a magic marker and plaster N’s all over my footwear. My collection of shirts runs the gamut from A to B. I have white shirts and I have blue shirts for casual wear. I see no need to have any other colors and in fact I think the blue ones seem a bit excessive. My class thinks I’m wearing the same white shirt every day because I have about twelve of them. Not cool. I may lay them out on my kitchen floor and put a large “N” on a few tonight. Maybe this is because I just don’t notice what’s going on. We’ll leave a meeting or party and I’ll say, “Who was that girl I was talking to?” My companion will say, “What was she wearing?” I’ll have no idea while my friend can give a complete description of every outfit at the gathering. How do people do that? More to the point, why do people do that? I once asked Patty, one of my coworkers, how she was able to remember what people wore. She looked at me as if I was in the last stages of dementia and said, “Well, I’m looking at them and they’re wearing it and it was only five minutes ago. What’s so hard about that?” She had me there. It must be me. I wore a tie to work every day for about 25 years of my teaching career, and only quit when I had to work under a principal who was an incompetent goofball. On his yearly evaluation of me he gave me the top marks on my mode of dress because in his words, “You dress just like me.” I stopped wearing ties to school. When my waistline gave up on me, I gave up on belts and now my drawers are totally supported by suspenders. The suspenders are red. My LLCC students know and take note of this since suspenders show through white shirts. I call it color coordination. I once bought a pair of black suspenders and they kept unsnapping at the most awkward moments, like while playing the Doxology at church, so I threw them away. Apparently there’s something about the color red that makes your pants stay up. Every few years suspenders will come into vogue for men’s wear and for those precious years I am once again fashionable in the eyes of my young actors. In the off season I’m back to being an old nerd. When push comes to shove and I’m actually questioned about my unfashionable take on fashion I reply with something about “It’s what’s inside that’s important, isn’t it?” . . . but that holds little sway with a critic who politely reminds me that it’s possible to be beautiful on the both the inside and outside. Since I don’t consider myself especially attractive from either viewpoint I put my sandals over my socks, slap on the red suspenders over my white shirt, and walk down the streets of Arenzville saying, “Yeah, but just look at the ‘N’ on my tennis shoes!”