From time to time a random thing will happen that, on its own, would be unremarkable and soon forgotten but instead forges a new connection to other random experiences and results in Insight. As I was walking out of Ken’s, our corner market, the middle aged black man who was washing the windows called after my retreating back,
“Hey. Nice shoes.”
On the face of it, this is clearly nothing to blog about. One might even read a desperate sort of loneliness into me for having even taken note of it, but wait, let me explain:
People don’t talk to me. I am not one of those people with such an open, friendly countenance that random people end up telling me their life stories in the checkout line. I walk through the world with a sort of formal, distracted coldness that generally keeps everyone but clerks and con-men from bothering to speak to me. This is just my nature: I am either actively thinking about something else and simply running my body on auto-pilot (which did not come with the ‘friendly expression’ expansion pack), or I am aware of the people around me and desperately hoping to avoid useless small talk.
As an aside, one of my greatest tools in avoiding random conversation is the Man Nod: brief eye-contact and a quick downward jerk of the chin*. This masculine code is one of the less respected foundational elements of modern civilization. Millions of times a day, men in casual to semi-formal meetings exchange the Man Nod and accomplish two simultaneously critical objectives: A) we ‘recognize’ each other as human in the Hegelian sense and avoid the need to engage in mortal combat to prove that we do not, indeed, fear death, and B) we avoid having to talk about the weather, road conditions, how we are “doing”, or even exchange names that we will soon forget **. The Man Nod is a critical tool for maintaining my personal space whilst outside.
So for someone to speak to me despite my carefully honed force shield of cool aloofness is, indeed, mentionably odd. As was the timing of his comment; I had passed him at the entrance and was at least ten feet down the sidewalk before he spoke. Clearly, this was no garrulously outgoing fool, constantly
*Not to be mistaken for the Bro Nod; a quick upward jerk of the chin which confirms pre-existing friendship and carries a vague “I’ll kick your ass (at some sport, or approximation of sport) later” connotation.
** Women are not sufficiently appreciative of the Man Nod. If those poor school boys in The Lord of the Flies had only had the opportunity to learn the Man Nod from their fathers before being castaway on that island they could have avoided all of that unpleasantness and politely, but distantly, awaited rescue. Women think that we are not participating in the critical civilizational glue of “communication” when we Nod, but if they only knew that, to us, having to say “Cold enough for ya?” one more time in our life vs. dropping a giant rock on this stranger's head is along the lines of a six on one hand, half a dozen on the other situation, they would be a bit more grateful for our Nodding.
scanning his environment for a chance to compliment strangers and ‘connect.’ If that had been the case, he would have said something as I approached him. Nor was he a regular employee of the store trying, and failing, to perform an Operating Procedures mandated, Wall-Mart style, loyalty accreting Customer Greeting; I know a sub-contractor when I see one.
No, the moment for ‘connecting’ had passed, I had left the ‘territory’ of the store, and the comment was awkward. Something had forced him past his own manly reticence and expelled this gobbet of appreciation at my retreating, indifferent back. There is only one force on earth that could have driven him from his own mental work space, breached his self-wrought autonomy, and emasculated him enough to share his feelings: Love.
Love and Guilt
There is no question that my shoes are nice. I first saw them in the fall of 2002 at a men’s specialty boutique in Bothell. The warm glow of the reddish brown leather, the supple weaving of thin leather strips that separate the toe from the instep, the simple, masculine shape; I lingered over them covetously and actually considered the $320 price tag. My clothes horse of a brother-in-law bought two pairs of them for himself that Christmas, one in the brown, one in black. That he bought a pair in black is merely evidence to how beautiful the brown were: in black, they were just a nice shoe, way too expensive for a nice pair of black shoes. The only justification for buying the black pair was that they honored the beauty of the brown. In other words, the brown were so wonderful they loaned glamour to an otherwise pedestrian black version that would never have justified $320 on its own. I both despised my brother-in-law for wasting the money on the black pair, and respected his dedication to the wonderment of the brown by buying the black just for that tiny reflected amount more of the brown they brought him.
For myself, $320 was too much to spend on a pair of shoes and I passed them by that fall, and that spring, and then in the fall again. I really don’t get to Bothell that often, and I think I may have just been visiting the shoes. My wife eventually took pity on me and bought them for me as a gift, thus laying the sin of prideful spending on her soul, not mine. Thanks Jess!
Unfortunately, attached to the purchase of beautiful expensive things comes an immediate burden of caretaker guilt. You spent so much on it, it’s so pretty, and yet entropy will win in the end and you know this! Something will happen to mar it’s perfection and it will be your fault! When I purchased my first new car at the age of 25 I spent several nights prior to picking it up daydreaming about bringing a hammer to the dealership and putting the first ding in it right then and there -- just to get it over with!
I tried to maintain the shoes, I did! I’m just not that handy. I own some shoe polishing tools, but I don’t know how to use them. I’ve always taken my shoes to a shoe repair shop when they needed shining. I knew this new pair, (Allen Edmonds is the brand, the model isn’t made anymore), would last for years and look beautiful the whole time if I just took good care of them. So, I tried. I took them in to be shined a couple of times in the first few years. But I just don’t spend much time thinking about my things and the only time I remember they need to be cared for is when I put them on – which is too late!
So by now the tips of my wonderful shoes are distinctly scuffed. They look unloved and I have guilt. I get compliments on them and in my mind it sounds like, “Nice shoes. Too bad you don’t take care of them.” Sigh.
Black Men Love my Shoes
And it’s not just the window washer at Ken’s! Two years ago I was on the University of Washington Tacoma Branch campus when my magic cloud of absent-minded indifference failed me in the same way. Once again I had drifted past a black man in a blue collar job, a security guard this time, without really registering him in any way. Once again he called after me, “Hey man. Those are some nice shoes!” He was a bit younger and a bit friendlier, he followed up by asking me what brand they were, so it did not seem quite such a breach of protocol on his part. I could easily imagine him making small talk with folks all over campus as he went through his day, so by itself this incident was not overly striking. But put the two incidences together . . .
Actually, I have no idea what this means. I really don’t know very many black people and am horrifically ignorant of African American culture and why these two men would break the silence I impose about myself to compliment this particular pair of shoes. I’m pretty sure I own other nice things, and I’m sure other people have spoken to me randomly without making any impression on me whatsoever. But as I walked away from Ken’s that day my mental reader board was flashing: BLACK MEN. THESE SHOES. WHAT IS THE CONNECTION????
