I don’t normally pay attention to the clothing that I wear.
Not that I wear just anything — it just doesn’t really seem that important to me. Consequently, I have never written about fashion on here because I don’t think I know anything about it. So it was a really weird experience when, the other day, I jumped off a bus in front of a group of elementary school kids, and was confronted with an assault of compliments on various aspects of my outfit. Thanks, Santa!
Let’s start with what I got the most compliments on: my shoes. My dad got me two pairs of Skechers for Christmas. Why? I have no idea. The day before he went out and bought them, he tried to offer me a pair he already had and didn’t want for himself. I took one look in the box and was like, “Absolutely not.” I returned them, and instead got myself two pairs of Vans. A pale purple pair, and then the ones I was wearing when I received no less than 8 compliments within 5 minutes on them: brown suede. I think they’re pretty sharp but I wasn’t expecting such a volley of compliments from the 8-11 year old set.
The item to receive the next highest number of compliments was my jeans, also new. Apparently they are “skinnies”, as one complimentary young girl called them. Black KR3W jeans. I discovered them years ago when I was dragged into some horrible store on Haight in San Francisco, and thought to myself, “Now here are some jeans I can get behind.” That pair now has a giant hole in the crotch, and like a hydra, I replaced them with two new pairs.
One kid also liked my hoodie (plain black), one liked my sunglasses (bright blue), and another liked my t-shirt (with a dissected deer on it), but with one vote each those don’t seem worth talking about. What does this mean? I don’t know. Elementary school kids like my style, I guess. Two of them were having a conversation with me, asking first if I played guitar, then if I played any instruments. Then they asked me if I skateboard. I told them “No.” One of them replied, “You look like you skate.”