...personal style

We went to buy Darren a new pair of shoes yesterday. The salesman was really good at his job, but as far as personal style goes he left a lot to be desired. He was a very overweight guy, shirt coming untucked all over the place, with too much gel combed through his very sparse hair.

He smelled a mint on Darren's breath and asked him if he could buy one off him for a quarter. Darren sold him one and as the salesman slumped down on the little fitting bench they sit on he said, "Thanks! I feel so much more confident now. I had a lot of coffee at lunch."

He brought Darren six or seven different shoes to try on based on what he perceived to be Darren's taste - clean and conservative. Just as Darren was deciding between the two final pairs a young man walked in that the salesman recognized.

This guy was pretty cool looking - he reminded me of a blond Eugene Hutz. If you don't know who that is please see Everything Is Illuminated with Elijah Wood (2005). Eugene Hutz plays Alex, a Ukrainian man who sees himself as a real lady's man. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Anyway, this guy who walked into the shoe store had that same kind of gangster hip-hop track suit style.

The salesman asked him if he wasn't So-and-So from Such-and-Such highschool back in Winnipeg and it turns out he was. Winnipeg is way over in Manitoba, about 1500 miles away so it was a real "small world" moment for them. The whole time the salesman was talking to us I thought he was Russian, and before I head them say Winnipeg, I thought Blond Eugene Hutz was Russian as well. Later Darren told me that Winnipeg is full of people from Russian and Ukrainian descent so the current local accent retains that flavour. Very interesting!

Anyway, I could tell that Blond Eugene Hutz wasn't really interested in catching up with the overweight, balding, bad-breath shoe salesman. After politely exchanging a few words he left the store. As soon as he was on the sidewalk the salesman turned to me and said, "Wow! He looks awful!" I lauged at him and said, "What?" He said, "He's aged really badly!"

So I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if that meant the shoe salesman had looked even worse in high school than he does now. What a schlub.