![]() I scrambled to escape, but it was too late. I walked into the kitchen one day and spied EPPIL sitting at the table with paint samples spread across the surface. That, of course, meant choosing paint, which lead to painful conversations. Each of the two houses we moved into needed painting. We’ve, of course, moved twice in the past three years-from Maggie Valley to Murrells Inlet and then to Asheville. If you think this problem is bad with clothes, imagine painting a house. I would tell you what the answer was, but I forgot seconds after EPPIL left. EPPIL came into my office, took one look, and named the color. My hesitation had been so long that even if I tried to answer, we both knew it was a wild guess. What color can be described as scout blue snow? Is that the same shade as a frozen boy scout in a drift? And isn’t snow a powder, so what was the difference between that and powder blue? And shouldn’t snow be white? Who comes up with these names? I knew what navy meant and had a reasonable guess to cobalt, but wasn’t Blue Lagoon a movie? In case you think I’m making this up, those are actual options from the Carhartt website. “Navy? Cobalt? Blue lagoon? Scout blue snow? Powder?” My silence must have communicated my challenge, because the question became a multiple choice option. If I’m oblivious to color, you can only imagine how clueless I am with variants. It wouldn’t matter if it was well lit, because I don’t look anyway. I, of course, had to look down for the answer. Just the other day, EPPIL called out from another room and asked, “What color shirt are you wearing today?” As long as they are Carhartts, I don’t care, but that raises a slightly different problem. My Ever Patent Partner in Life, however, keeps a veritable rainbow of t-shirts in my drawer. Left to my own devices, of course, I would own a dozen gray t-shirts. Carhartt t-shirts come in a ridiculous variety of colors. I get up each morning, pull on a pair of jeans, grab whatever t-shirt is at the top of the drawer, and I’m ready to start the day.ĭespite my routine, I’m far more colorful than the simple variations a tie can provide. I don’t wear shoes in the house, so no worries of a mis-match. Getting dressed each morning takes even less thought than the old suit-wearing days. In the summer, I stow away the jeans and replace with shorts. Yes, I am a walking billboard for Carhartt. If I go outside, I throw on a Carhartt coat. During the winter, I dress in Carhartt jeans and a Carhartt t-shirt. Now that I write for a living, I rarely leave the house. I’ve always been happiest on one of our mountain trails, so why shouldn’t those clothes be what I wore daily? A “suit” is someone to be avoided, not trusted.īetween the discomfort of wearing a suit and the knowledge of perception, I dreamed of the day when every piece of clothing I wore could be bought from a local outdoor store. Walk any plant floor, hospital, warehouse, call center, or any other workplace, and you quickly understand that a coat and tie do represent status, but not in a positive way. Wearing a piece of cloth knotted around your neck is, frankly, stupid. Perhaps I regularly clumped around in disparate footwear, and it was just the first time I noticed.īy the end of each day in an office, I was ready to chuck the suit. Maybe they were so accustomed to my lack of style that they didn’t think it was out of character.Īn even scarier thought is maybe that wasn’t the first time I had ever done such a thing. In case you were wondering, nobody mentioned my faux pas. ![]() The morning was half over before I noticed. I grabbed clothes out of the closet, dressed, and headed to the office without spying my error. On daring days, I pushed the boundaries with a blue shirt or yellow tie.Īnd, no, I didn’t wear socks with sandals-or even just sandals-but I once wore a mismatched pair of shoes-one black and one brown. Each day, I would put on the official men’s uniform of offices everywhere-dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. In the typical unfairness between the sexes, as a guy, I didn’t have to think about my clothes. In defense of my lack of taste, I worked in Corporate America for nearly three decades. I thought people would enjoy the insanity of RVing with a half-dozen Siberian Huskies, but the comments quickly focused on my footwear choice. Many years ago, I posted a picture sitting in a campsite with my dogs. Socks seem like a logical solution to me. Yes, I know, I can hear the collective gasp of horror even as I type, but I don’t care. Have you ever seen a gnat wearing socks with sandals? It’s offensive to stylish flying pests everywhere.
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