Walking Cross-Town. Untied. Unhinged.

~ Live & Learn

shoes-socks-mens

Eyes are closed. Water spills over shoulders. Steam spills over the top of the shower curtain. If there is a God, this is his Temple. One of life’s simplest and most magnificent pleasures.

I turn up the heat, and just stand, arms down, shoulders curled and leaning forward – I breathe.  Snippets of Mary Oliver leak in…”But mostly I just stand…in the middle of the world, breathing in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name but breath and light, wind and rain.”

Release.

I step out. Towel dry.  One eye is on the clock. Can’t miss the 6:16 to get to an 8 am meeting in Midtown.

I pull on knee length socks.  It was less than 30 seconds, 30 years ago, but his words still bite.  The wound still fresh, the cuts over something so small yet replayed thousands of times since and triggered each morning when I slide on my socks. “Over-the-calf socks are crude,” he said. “One shouldn’t see the hair on your legs. And polish your shoes.” Crude.

I button shirt. Slide on pants. Loop belt. Tie tie.

I grab shoes, set them down and lean over.

I pull on both ends of the laces on the left shoe.

Snap! Damn!

6:03 am

Replace lace? Never find a replacement in time.

Swap to different shoes?  There’s another pair waiting four feet away.  Do it Dave, do it.  For some inexplicable reason, I can’t do it.

I tug on the ends of the laces to get them even. One end of the shoe lace has a plastic aiglet, the other does not.

6:04 am.  7 min walk to the station

I begin to thread the aiglet-less end through one hole, then the second and get to the third.  It won’t thread. I twist it and try it again. No go.

6:05 am.

I wet my finger, twist it again, and I’m able to thread it. A sweat bead accumulates on the brow.

I have less than two inches of lace on each side.  I’m careful not to rip what’s left – I gingerly tie my shoe.

I look down at my handiwork, there’s a nice bow on the right, and something resembling a newly hatched larvae on my left.

6:08 am. Gotta go. Gotta go.

7:20 am. I’m walking to the office cross-town. I’m off, my equilibrium is off kilter. While the right marches forward, the left foot is sloppy.  Brilliant.  And then Genius, what if the lace rips again, then what?

I favor my right foot, being careful not to put undue pressure on the lace on the left.

I limp across town.

8:58 am.

I’m wrapping up the breakfast meeting, it’s with a group of top performers.

Before we break, I’m posed a question about the business: “Dave, what are you most worried about?”

I pause, wiggle the foot in my left shoe under the table, and smile…

If they only knew….

Notes:

52 thoughts on “Walking Cross-Town. Untied. Unhinged.”

  3. my shoe broke on the first day of school, right as i was about to give my presentation and welcome to my new families. i went barefoot. as for your shoes, isn’t it funny how a tiny thing, like a shoelace, can cause so much worry? p.s. are those your shoes in the photo?

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        1. Hold on. I gave you no more credit than is due. For more than 25 years you have carried a Franklin Planner on most days, an in its pouch, waiting to be called into action, is a bandaid and and extra pair of shoe laces. Come on Man. You are something special. Full stop.

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  7. Hhhmmm…
    Few weeks ago, as soon as Esam came in from work, he immediately proceeded to take his pants off.
    “These need to be fixed, please! ”

    I looked and there were 8 large size safety pins all along the crotch line.
    He said it happened early during the day.
    I don’t know how he was able to function with 8 large safety pins down there.

    He works at Bloomingdales, they have an alterations department, he could have bought something, but No!

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  13. Great post. Reminds me of my workplace a bit.
    I work with a lady, I call her Ruthless, that anytime you start to explain why you did something she starts shaking her head “no” before you get three words out of your mouth.
    Then the boss, Dan-O, he’s a basket case all the time, and when confronted with a little pressure he starts scratching his head.
    So we had some Upper Management people in, and it was high anxiety around here, and the Regional VP asked me some non-consequential question about how I do my work. I looked past the VP, and Ruthless and Dan-O are standing there behind him with terrified looks on their faces, Rachel shaking her head “no”, and Dan-O scratching his head with BOTH HANDS.
    It was too much and I just cracked up, and the VP asked me why I was cracking up and I just went ahead and told him just what I have told you here.

    Anyway, that was three years ago. Things have changed a little. Dan-O is cooler, and doesn’t scratch his head hardly at all. Rachel seldom shakes her head “No”, and the techs in the shop that told me on my first day at work 10 years ago “we dont say good morning here”, all say good morning now.
    I got a promotion this week. I’ve somehow managed to change the whole culture of our office here, and I did it from the very bottom of the food chain. I’m proud of that.

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  14. Such a human story! I think if we even began to know what people were worried about, we would all realise how insane our minds are! I have a new saying, “I am not my mind, I am not my body.” Believing this is the hard part. 🙏🏻

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  16. I saw the photo and thought DK’s, socks and shoes, NO Way…cause I know you aren’t a Sock Rebel…I do recall a previous post of yours when you mentioned a colleague’s saying some biting words, 30 years ago when you were starting out in the business world and that it still stings…and I mentioned something about haberdashery in NYC…sorry the caustic words creep in at times…hope that on the weekends your black socks are out of view, tucked away, hibernating in their sock drawer…and some fun socks grace your feet.

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  17. PS: the shoe’s threaded laces in the photo are non conforming to the color of the shoes…and now I think of a scene from the movie “Sixteen Candles” and Sammy Baker Davis Jr’s grandfather Fred standing in her room, wearing his underwear including socks held up with ‘Sock Suspenders’ etched in my minds eye is that image and that of Fred Mertz, Lucy’s neighbor with his high waist-ed pants…

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  19. I just read this quote: “If any two people could ever really get inside each other’s head, it would scare the pee out of both of them. ” John D. MacDonald

    Or maybe laugh the pee out of both of them…

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    1. Yes Carolann. Yes. Reminds me of:

      what I’m trying to say is that your way of experiencing the world is subtly and vastly different from mine or the strawberry-eating doctor’s or the high-fivers’, and that these alternate realities—the world seen through the muck of billions of different brains—encompass much of the wonder and freakishness of being alive.

      ~ Peter Orner, from “Chekhov’s Way of Dying” in Am I Alone Here?: Notes On Living to Read and Reading to Live (Catapult, 2016)

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  20. When we worry about the newly hatched larvae on the left foot, there is a good reason to be grateful – nothing bigger to worry about. This was a smile hatcher, David. Definitely.

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