Monday, June 14, 2010

Dress for the Occasion

Let me set up the background for this story. We live in a pretty sparsely populated area. There are a lot of days when maybe one car will drive by. We love the quiet privacy and peaceful existence that we enjoy but it would be nice to have a few neighbors.

Anyway, early this morning while drinking my coffee, I suddenly had an urge to drive down to our bottom pasture and check the cows. There is a crew working on a new bridge down there but I figured with last night's rains, nobody would be around. So in the interest of comfort and ease, alright, laziness, I just slipped on my son's mud boots and left wearing a pair of baggy gym-shorts that I sleep in. And I should mention that our son's boots are pretty big, actually you can walk right out onto the pond or a river and float on top of the water while wearing them, so I probably looked pretty much clown-like, but, as I say, nobody else is around and the cows don't seem to care what I look like.

Out of the pickup I was walking down the road towards the cow pasture when seemingly out of nowhere, four young men in hard hats, two of them smoking cigarettes, appeared from behind a large crane setting by the bridge repair. I was caught in an awkward position, if I went ahead, I looked like some idiot dressed the way I was. If I turned and walked the other way it would look like I was guilty of something. So, I buried my pride and waddled by them trying to make small talk as they stared. I would almost have felt better if one of them had made a wisecrack or someone had laughed out loud. No such luck. Just complete silence.

On the bright side, I suppose I did add some interesting conversation to their day and can only wonder what my new nickname is. Anyway, the moral of the story is, "always dress for the occasion".

1 comment:

  1. Where's the photo! Don't worry, we have a contractor well known around our office for his smaller than stylish purple shorts and lack of shirt. By contractor standards, he's got one heck of a tan.

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