Brown Shoes

My "About Me" section is quite simple: I'm a pair of brown shoes stuck in a world of tuxedos.

I stole this from a Johnny Carson clip of George Gobel, a not-exactly funny comedian. He, of course, was making a joke, but I took it for myself in a serious way.

I love the image of me as a pair of brown shoes looking for my non-black-tie event.

At the worst of times, this is the story of me not fitting in wherever I go. At the best of times, it's me being myself wherever I go. They are two sides of the same coin, but a very different feeling.

The first is isolated and lonely: We call that Tuesday Night (when I can stay up a little later than the rest of the week and have time to reflect, which is always scary...). It's the feeling I have had in the social past of my camp days: too young to hang with the older crowd, too old-acting to hang with the younger crowd. It's the feeling I've had in certain employment situations when I'm not quite staff and not quite student, so I fall in between. It's the feeling I get at parties where I don't know anybody or at restaurants when I'm the only singe one -- and sometimes it's the feeling I get walking through the park with the gittery inability to keep one song playing on my MP3 player for more than 18 seconds.


The second is that liberating time when I feel free and liberated from the world around me. It's those moments when I pull out my earbuds and dance to the music in my head, twirling in the rain. It's the times when I sit in a park or a coffee shop or a book store with my pad of paper, pen, and words flow from my brain to my pad so quickly I don't know if my brain or my hand is doing the thinking. It's those moments when I'm in front of a band, conducting my music, controlling the fate of the instantaneous creation that comes with live performance. It's the feeling of versatility -- brown shoes can be casual or dressy, depending on what they're going with -- while those around me are stuck in one setting -- a tuxedo never sends a mixed signal and cannot be shifted from venue to venue with the mere change shirt.

Good with the bad, I'll take my chances in life as a pair of brown shoes.

Especially the ones that are slightly warn, snug, and nearly as comfortable as bare feet.

And now, the clip of the Carson show, which may completely ruin everything I've stated above...but then again, the metaphor of a pair of brown shoes is, in fact, a pair of brown shoes: good for many meanings and contexts.

Here's the comedic one: