There
I was in my stained polo shirt
by
Robert LaFrance
A recent column used the theme ‘the
more things change, the more they stay the same’. Somebody and I were recently
talking about how people don’t visit people any more – that is, they don’t
‘drop in’ and say hello for half an hour. We must phone first and arrange an
appointment which is then recorded in triplicate.
It occurred to me that four or five
decades ago people didn’t do those impromptu visits any more than they do now,
but it was for a different reason. They had the cows to plough, the garden to
wash, and the manure to spread on the barn floor – farm jobs like that. People
didn’t have time to visit, but they would see each other downtown or at the
Saturday night dance; the only real socializing took place at things like
wedding receptions and barn raisings.
That’s another thing (of many) that
I have never understood; why did barns ever need to be raised? Seems to me
they’re quite high enough as it is.
Back to the reasons that people
don’t visit these days. For a long time it was television, but with the advent
of the VCR, we can tape shows and watch them when we get back home, so that’s
not the reason now. Wanna know the reason? Here it is: People are run by their
animals. “Oh, my, no, we can’t leave little Fifi home all alone; she would be
lonely and it could affect (impact?) her psychologically. Goodness me.”
It’s true. These days people use
their pets as a wonderful excuse not to do anything, like visiting somebody in
hospital or nursing home. They can’t leave Fifi home where she’d be lonely,
they can’t leave her in the car while they go into the hospital, and they won’t
visit people who don’t want their cringing yapping lapdogs inside their house.
(Our dog stays outside where a dog should be.)
Don’t get me started on cats.
*****************************
I had to go to a wedding reception
last Saturday and as usual I was dressed to the threes. I like to ‘put on the
dog’ for those types of events where someone could be taking photos.
“I think the expression is ‘dressed
to the nines’, Bob,” said my friend Flug, who is a retired Parliament Hill
barber. “If you are all spiffed up and looking good, you are dressed to the
nines.”
“Flug,” I said not quite patiently,
“you have known me for at least a hundred years. Have I ever, once, been what
you would call dressed to the nines?” He looked over at me in my stained polo
short (did I ever play polo?) and pants that were tailor-made, but not for me.
My shoes would have made an Adidas janitor retch and my socks were, as usual,
mismatched, one blue and one green. My niece would have called me ‘a global
fashion faux pas’, and that ain’t nothing good.
After that perusal, he said that he
had by that time understood my point; I had been dressed well for me, but no
more than ‘to the threes’. That brought on a discussion of being in fashion,
something that’s only occurred to me once in my life. Back in the 1990s,
teenagers started appearing in public while they (the teenagers, not the
public) were wearing jeans that were almost torn to shreds. I would see a
16-year-old whose parents’ annual income was in the $150,000 range dress as if
he had just ‘rode the rails’ from Moncton and fell onto the tracks a few times.
Looking down at my own clothes, I
would then look back at that teenager and think: “Bob! You’re finally in
style!” But that was only for a short time. When they started wearing baseball
caps backward, I gave up and bought a pair of pants without rips and tears.
Like barn raising, the idea of wearing the cap visor at the back didn’t make a
lot of sense. Bell-bottom pants and hip-hop are two more phenomena that fit
that category. When people look back, they will say: “What was I thinking?”
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Merchandizing and capitalism in
general have always fascinated me. The Kincardine Hardware Store that operates
out back of the club had a massive field day (so to speak) during this summer’s
heat wave. Man, was that hot for a while! Not complaining though.
In one day the KHS sold 19 air
conditioners and continued to sell a dozen a day over that heat wave. Ernie
Edze, who runs the store, said he had gotten a good buy on them because they
had been ‘damaged in shipment’. A friend of his drives for the AC company and
had a little mishap just down the road. Didn’t hurt the van, but 90 air
conditioners were scratched.
Anyway, the point is that Ernie sold
189 AC units, and two weeks later when the weather turned much colder, he sold
94 wood heaters. They had also been damaged in shipment. Go figure.
-end-
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