Inching up in the world just takes two clogs

OFF/BEAT GLIDEWELL E-mail: Click here Archive

By JAN GLIDEWELL

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 29, 2001

Wow, the world looks different from up here!

A friend of mine in the clothing business persuaded me last week to buy "man clogs," a style of shoe long popular with women and now worn by a lot of men in Europe. But the shoe style hasn't quite caught on here in the States.

I just love to be on the cutting edge of fashion.

I'm comfortable enough with my sexual orientation that I'm not bothered by wearing what looks like a leather version of wooden shoes, any more than I am by carrying a purse when I'm in Europe and need to because of all of the extra stuff I carry there.

(I would carry it here, too, but something about being home causes my innate absent-mindedness to kick in and I keep losing it.)

Besides, my friend promised me that these are very butch man-clogs, and I long ago reached the age where I am more than willing to sacrifice style for comfort, which is probably why I own six pairs of Birkenstock sandals.

Because everything is relative, adding 2 inches to my height actually leaves me in a category that a lot of folks would consider "short," but to me, it's a lot.

My high school football program says I am 5 feet 9. It also says I weighed 160 pounds when I actually weighed 145, a coach's idea of intimidation. (Strange, remembering a day when my weight was adjusted upward when being lied about, and when there was an intimidation factor in a 160-pound lineman.)

When I entered the Marine Corps, my height was recorded at a more realistic 5 feet 8, and that's what I claimed until a doctor pointed out during a physical a few years back that I'm now more in the 5-feet-7-and-three-quarters category.

That's sort of on the short side of average from where I see it, and from where I see it, I seem to be looking up at a lot of people.

And don't think height doesn't matter. When I dated a 6-foot-1 woman in the early '70s, she regularly called me "Twerp," and made me stand two steps up on her porch to kiss her good night. Dancing was out of the question. We no longer kiss, but, 28 years later, she still calls me Twerp.

And I notice that whenever I go places with my myriad of bosses, they are almost uniformly taller than I. It doesn't lead to any real problems, except that I get a stiff neck whenever I am being chewed out by more than one of them at a time, and I have to run to keep up on the way to lunch.

But those days may be over.

I was amazed when I first put the shoes on to realize that the entire world looked different. I had to consciously guide my hand to a different location to do things like open doors, and I couldn't get my legs inside my van without moving the seat back, and leaving it there.

Friends whom I once could look at eye-to-eye without adjusting my gaze, suddenly are, well, beneath me, altitudinally speaking.

The last time I remember this happening was when I bought my first pair of jump boots in 1964 and, as the only Marine in a bar full of Army paratroopers, became convinced that taller was badder, an illusion of which I was hastily (and somewhat rudely, I might add) disavowed.

I'm considerably older and a little wiser now, and learned during the holiday weekend that clogs may be gaining acceptance in some circles but are still a bad idea in a portion of beach heavily populated by bikers, so I'm trying not to let my new stature go to my head.

It's probably too late in my career to make a move into management. Actually, I am proud to say that in the 35 years since I left the military, I have never given any other living human being an order, unless it involved french fries or freshly ground pepper on my salad.

And I have to take into consideration that I work in an office devoid of managers, the nearest one being some 30 miles away, so the only people to see my newly acquired swagger are my, as usual distinctly unimpressed, colleagues and peers.

I made one try, messaging an unusually tall editor about the arrival of this column that it would be there tall-ly instead of shortly.

If he got it, he didn't let on.

Might as well take the shoes off and let my feet rest.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright