It’s
official – I’m Canada’s #1 Slob
by
Robert LaFrance
I may never be on ‘reality’ TV, but
I think I have by now proven that I am the most slovenly creature in all of
Canada. Among the criteria are: (1) dress and deportment, (2) table manners,
and (3) what else is there to slovenliness – if there is such a word.
At a recent potluck supper where
everyone else was dressed to the eights or possibly even the nines, I stood out
like Stephen Harper at an Amnesty International convention.
It doesn’t matter how many times I
am told, or I tell myself, to ALWAYS wear dark coloured clothing to such an
event – or anywhere outside our own basement – I went to that potluck supper
dressed in a pair of very light brown trousers and a white shirt with thin stripes.
Surveying the result in a full-length mirror, I thought I looked almost
presentable. That is, as close to presentable as I ever get.
Eight minutes later I spilled
chocolate milk on my pants and had to change them. Talk about learning a
lesson: I put on an even lighter coloured pair. They fairly hurt the eyes with
their brightness, even though the wearer didn’t project the same
characteristic.
Somehow I got to the car without
spilling anything more on myself, then, as I was about to climb in, I noticed that
there was a small mud puddle on the ground right near the driver’s side. It was
then I knew I should I gotten my wife to drive. Back inside to change my pants
again, but this time I was thinking ahead; I backed the car away from the mud
puddle. Another pair of light-coloured pants, and we were away.
It somehow became my job to carry in
the rhubarb crisp that my wife had made for the pot luck supper, and I didn’t
spill much of the juice. Besides, it was nearly the shade of my shirt. I set
the pan down on the counter and dripped more juice, this time on my shoes.
After some conversation, during
which I tried to rub off the stains and made them worse, the hosts served a red
liquid, which went nicely with the raspberry stains that had somehow gotten on
my shirt, although I had only walked by that dessert. Then it was time for us
to pick up our platefuls of food of all colours. By the time I finished the
first plateful, my clothes looked like a male peacock’s tailfeathers. There’s
another word I’m trying to think of – oh yes, a kaleidoscope.
After several return engagements to
the food counter, it was time for dessert, and what a colourful mélange it was.
Coincidentally, when I had finished, my shirt held pretty much the same
colours. “Where did you get your Hawaiian shirt?” asked one well-meaning
matron. I told her Kincardine and she wanted to know where the clothing store
was in that part of the Scotch Colony.
Finally it was time for us to leave,
and if anyone wanted to know which foods I had sampled (if gorging can be
called sampling) all they had to do was look at my shirt. Rhubarb crisp, lemon
cake, raspberry squares and other colourful and delicious sweets were all
there, and there was one black stain that I took to be dark chocolate pie, cake
or possibly soufflé.
When we got home I was called
various names for being such a slob, but I tried to defend myself; it wasn’t my
fault. Grampy Muff’s genes were still going strong. He couldn’t eat an apple
without ruining his coveralls. I pointed out to my wife that her Uncle Earl had
bought a sweater in 1935 and was still wearing it in the late 1980s, so her
family’s genes were less susceptible to rampant slobbery. She ended the
conversation by saying: “If you ever again wear light coloured clothes to a
potluck supper – or any other kind of meal except an intravenous one – I will
not EVER give you a divorce.”
A threat like that could be
incentive enough for me to be somewhat more meticulous in my eating habits, but
of course my style (?) of dress is so far beyond redemption that the Hubble
Telescope would belch at any attempt to see it.
I have never understood why I am such a slob at my
eating and dressing habits. When I get up in the morning I make a real attempt
to put on clothes that don’t embarrass me and my family, but it’s as if my Evil
Twin were guiding the whole process. I never liked him.
My friend Flug put it into perspective many years
ago when he asked me: “Bob, do you buy your clothes with the stains already on
them?”
-end-
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