Schlubs

I'll own up now, I am not a fashion plate.  Never have been, probably never will be.  I clean up well but sartorial endeavors are generally not on my screen for most of daily life.  So I'm not sure just how much credibility I have in this particular area of human interest.

This is not to say I am completely ignorant of how to dress, or what to wear, or at least how to put on clothes and not look like a dweeb when I leave the house.  Most of the time I do want to maintain a minimum standard of neatness and decorum, just by personal inclination.  What that means is that sometimes I even tuck in my t-shirts.  And I don't go grocery shopping in flip flops and cutoffs.

Which brings me to the subject of this post:  Schlubs, and the women they inflict themselves upon.

I took Wee Lass out for dinner over the weekend, after which we went for a stroll down the main street to window shop and have ice cream.  Something was bugging me, though, something that started during dinner and came into full bloom while we were out walking.  There were an unusual number of schlubs out that evening.  It started with the guy in the restaurant who was wearing a tank top and what looked like satin basketball shorts, along with bizarro black tennis shoes complete with red piping.  He looked like he had just crawled out of a hamper.

His wife (I assume she was his wife, they were eating together with two kids and behaving like a family unit) on the other hand was dressed casually, too, but so much more put together.  Simple black top with white capri pants and canvas deck shoes.  Maybe not knock-'em-dead elegant, but it looked good.  It looked like she gave a hoot about simple things like matching! and neat! and 'I didn't just get up!'.

When we left the restaurant I was sensitized to the phenomenon, as I really started to notice the walking fashion victims attached to arms of (for the most part) much more 'with it' lady companions.  Wrinkled t-shirts, river rat shoes, baggy cargo shorts, ragged jeans with flip-flops and far too many logos for beer and cars and drinking establishments.  All of these contrasted with nice summer dresses, well-fitting shorts, interesting shoes (I confess, my knowledge of womens shoe etiquette is sketchy), even just simple tops and intriguing accessories.  While it wasn't a top hat and tails evening, just a casual weekend night out, the ladies looked a lot better than the dudes.  Like they actually thought about it.  The guys, they made me wonder in some cases if they had scintillating personalities (or money) or if maybe they were just plain lucky to be in the company of the women with them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing a plain tan t-shirt (tucked in), off white shorts and canvas tan casual shoes with light brown laces.  I wouldn't have won any awards for world-class casual dress, no doubt, I felt I could hold my own against the Larry, Darryl and Darryls out that night.  My daughter was wearing a casual summer top over flower-patterned shorts, along with her favorite golden sandals

To paraphrase Al Pacino in And Justice For All..."Don't you care, guys?  don't you even care?".

I know it isn't earth-shattering, maybe even flirts with shallowness, but I bring this up because I didn't used to care. And now?  I do.  I don't know why, I just do.  While I'm not so much a block head that I would try to outshine the sun, I do want feel like I belong in the same part of the sky.  And that means, for better or worse, that I have to care about how I shine.