Clothing Optional?
Not too long ago, I posted another saga of sartorial… hmmmm… “splendor” doesn’t seem the right word, does it?
Well, no matter.
Just as with the previous post, today’s sample (written long ago) is an excerpt from The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions. Someday, I’ll get around to posting some more gastronomical portions of those ramblings—but, after today, maybe a promise not to let any more confessions out of the closet. If you have read Unbelievable, you might recognize its main character, Kendry Vero, in some of the following:
One of Many Ways to Mis-spend One’s Youth
Editor’s Note: To look at Sanscravat today, one would never imagine that he had ever given a moment’s thought to his attire. The wrinkles on his face are more than matched by the wrinkles in his curiously out-of-date clothes. Yet, as will become evident, that was not always the case. He seems to have spent entirely too much time thinking about the discrepancies between the inner and outer man.
At dinner last night, with a very old friend, we shared reminiscences from our childhoods. There was even some discussion about how she used to beat me up when we were in elementary school. It must be stated, upfront, that in matters of public pugilism, she was not alone.
Everyone beat me up.
The boys in my grade beat me up. The boys in the grade below me beat me up. There may have been other girls who beat me up—but I’ve repressed those recollections.
There are limits to how much of this sort of thing one wants to archive.
It is sufficient to say that there were enough bloody noses and black eyes to have more than exhausted all plausible, or even possible, excuses. There were not enough doorknobs in all of Christendom to account for my collection of shiners.
Finally, at my advanced age, I am beginning to understand a little about that part of my life. The recollections of my emotional state, at the age of ten or so, seem to consist largely of variations on feeling unjustly challenged by an especially burdensome combination of two vexations unique to my childhood.
The more immediately troublesome of the two was my wardrobe.
My parents got a lot of hand-me-downs from god-knows-where, and these consisted largely of baggy brown dress pants and hideous plaid shirts. The embarrassment I suffered each morning as I walked to the bus stop, my skinny little legs lost in the acres of thin brown wool worsted that ballooned ludicrously in the cruel wind. The low wintry sun shone mercilessly through that mockery of stylish clothing, my demoralized book bag slapping against my hairless calves. The idea that my parents had no money to spend in pursuit of my personal sartorial ideal never occurred to me. It was obvious that this was merely a form of torture—inflicted, perhaps, in the mistaken idea that it would build character in me.
The cruel irony of being forced to adopt this pitiful exterior was that I knew that it prevented the other children from seeing my real worth. This is how the second affliction manifested itself, subtly entangling itself in my other miseries.
This strip, by Bill Watterson, was found on “Exploring Calvin and Hobbes”
For some time, I had been aware that I was much smarter than most of my classmates and neighbors. I possessed super-powers, known to me alone—the ability to move silently through the forest, an eerily complete comprehension of the hidden forces of the universe, an uncanny ability to spell words correctly, uncommonly decent penmanship—attributes these children either could not see or were incapable of appreciating. I was certain that it was all because of those pants, those pathetically pleated pants, too big by far for my puny frame—but cinched into a kind of surrogate waist (for I had no real waist) by a brown leatherette belt, the belt loops and extraneous fabric jammed up against each other as if desperate for company.
Now, this awareness of my secret powers—or, at the very least, of the overarching magnitude of my mental capacities—might not have been an additional burden to me, (even if the flapping of those damnable bags could have been kept to a barely audible level), had I possessed the wisdom to use those powers for good. Too late, I realized that, whether or not I actually was that much more intelligent, it was impolitic to point out the discrepancy to the other children. I don’t recall if I tried to enlighten the parents of those children in the same manner—’though, in my efforts to overcome the trial of the trousers, I might even have committed that indiscretion.
Never one to hide my lamp under a bushel, I had the daylights pounded out of me on a fairly regular basis.
I should point out that I was not only skinny but very short, in those days. When I was about thirteen, I suddenly became the tallest boy in the class. In my attempts to understand those years of being bullied by all and sundry, I have kept—almost as an article of faith—the idea that the beatings stopped because I was larger and more able to defend myself.
I think I now know another reason.
I started to wear hipper clothes. I had tight black pants, too small by far for my now larger frame (this being, at the time, the epitome of adolescent chic). I wore only pointy black (anything but brown) shoes and possessed not a single plaid shirt. I was much too cool for my former attire.
This argument, based on the dictates of fashion, makes almost perfect sense—and, most gratifyingly, confirms the suspicions I held as an unrecognized child prodigy—but for one puzzling fact.
Today, I wear practically nothing but baggy, pleated, brown wool pants. Virtually all my shirts are plaid. I will buy nothing else—and the beatings have not started again.
Yet.
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