Friday, March 12, 2010

Ugly Clothes

You won't find a lot of dress clothes in my closet. I own a blue blazer and a blue pinstripe suit. I have three pair of dress shoes. If you look closely you'll see three dress shirts, two with button down collars. Somewhere in there are four or five ties. Jump back in a time machine twenty-five years and my closet looked like a storage den for Hart Schaffner & Marx. I had my fair share of Florsheim Imperial shoes. I owned more dress ties than there are M&M's in a 2 pound bag. As a high school teacher I dressed to the nines. When I started working in steel mills I didn't wear very many three piece suits; didn't see the need to.
In the past few months I've noticed that TV news people, men especially, wear purple ties and purple shirts. Why is that? It's also the recognizable color for The Service Employees International Union(SEIU).
I understand that wearing purple is a personal preference but it's a darned ugly preference. To illustrate, I know a teacher who used to wear a yellow leisure suit. The students called him, "Canary". But, he never wore a purple leisure suit. You know why? Horton the Elephant sat on a purple nest and wore purple clothes. That's why.
When I was twelve, during the Elvis era, I wore blue suede shoes and iridescent blue pants with black vertical stripes. It was an ugly combination but it wasn't purple ugly.

God has way of absolutely destroying my cockiness, doesn't He? It's pushing 70 degrees outside, the wife is gone and I know I can grab the walker for a trip to the curb and back. Besides, all the snow has melted as of yesterday. There isn't much danger of tripping over a feather and hurting myself. I took just two steps out the door and looked to my left. Beautiful, purple, pansies are now in bloom.

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