Well of Course

Since I finished my degree and started teaching, my wardrobe decisions have been based primarily around looking halfway professional. This seems not to be a universal concern amongst professors. I know of one professor who is barely distinguishable from a homeless person. There is another who could easily be an extra on Trailer Park Boys. I don't think I'm smart enough to get away with that, however.

While blue jeans are my preferred choice of lower-body clothing, everything that I've bought in the last year and a half has been denim free. My favourite, most recently purchase pairs of jeans (identical) have both worn out, leaving me with two other pairs. One is a pair that these replaced. The other pair seemed fashionable when I bought them in 1999. However, due to a long string of bad dietary decisions, they became too small, so they got stored in the bottom of my drawer until a year or two ago. They now fit my lower-body, but don't fit in with the rest of my wardrobe, or anybody else's. I'm not sure what made anyone think they were fashionable when they were. On the other hand, they possess the distinct advantage of not being worn out, due the the preservative effects of the cardboard box in which they were stored for 6 years. I mainly wear them if I don't plan on being seen by anyone who knows me. In other words, I don't usually wear them when I leave the house.

This morning in particular, I decided to wear them, thinking I'd be in all day. Later this afternoon, on a whim, I decided to venture out to the mall nearby in hopes of finding the perfect winter coat (a lifelong quest, it seems). When I got to the mall, I realized that I had forgotten to change out of these jeans. "Oh well," I thought, "I don't know too many people who live around here anymore. Who could I possibly run into? Besides, if they laugh, I don't need 'em 'cause they're not good friends." The first store that I went to was Sport Chek. I saw a coat that I liked at one of their other locations, but the only one that they had in stock was too small. The selection at this location was better, and I managed to find a similar coat in a larger size (the main difference between this one and the first one I had seen was in the material that the collar was made of, which is immaterial to me). Even though it was bigger, I wasn't sure it was bigger enough, so I didn't make the purchase.

I thought about walking around the rest of the mall to see if I could find something in another store, but this was the third mall I visited in 4 days, and it was becoming apparent that the main difference between one mall and the next is the layout. Most of the stores that appear in one will likely appear in the other. I had already sifted through the merchandise at the stores in the other malls, and even if there were stores at this mall that I hadn't been to yet, the chances of finding something I liked were still pretty low, so I decided to leave.

On my way out, I saw the Danier Leather store, which was suggested to me after I returned from the second mall outing, but which I hadn't been to yet. I've never yearned for leather anything in the past, so I didn't expect to make a purchase. I just wanted to see what sorts of things they had, so I could go home and think about it. One of women at the cash looked familiar. It wasn't implausible that she could be who I thought she might be, since she married someone from around here (younger brother of an old friend, coincidentally), but her hair was a fair bit longer than I remembered it being, so I wasn't sure. I proceeded to check out the coats.

I had just finished looking when I noticed a display of wallets, something else on my list of things to buy (fairly low on the list, but yep, it was on there). After looking for a while, I found a wallet worthy of my pocket, so I went to buy it. When the transaction was nearly completed, the somewhat familiar cashier asked me for my name (something to do with a warranty).

"Randy," I said.

"I thought so," she responded.

"Hilary?"

"Yes."

And we proceeded to chit-chat about what we've been up to since she finished with Queen's. Fortunately for me, the offending jeans were hidden from her view by the checkout counter.