What's Your Uniform?

I remember getting into arguments with my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend at the time about the importance of what people choose to wear. I'm not speaking figuratively, existentially, or anything like that. I'm talking about clothes.

"You're conventional," she used to tell me. "You dress conventionally."

As a self-professed radical in my twenties, this was like the worst possible thing anyone could have accused me of.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Conventional,” she said. “You know, petite bourgeois.”

This was always a conversation-ender, mainly because she had studied Marx in her political science classes, and I was an English major, more interested in Russian authors than in the politics she was studying.

Don’t get me wrong: I was committed to the causes I demonstrated about, but on a basic “humanist” level that didn’t live up to her level of dogmatic commitment. The clothing was the outward manifestation of this basic difference for her.

Looking back now, I realize she was absolutely right; I was more conventional that she was. And my “aw, shucks” attitude about just wearing whatever I was wearing for no particular reason was incorrect. The fact is we all wear uniforms. I’m wearing one right now – dress slacks, black loafers, button down shirt with no tie, and a blazer. I’m dressed in my school-reformer uniform. It gives the vague impression of school teacher/college professor, with a dash of liberalism thrown in by omitting the necktie.

I look at the people sitting around the coffee shop where I’m writing this, and they’re all in uniforms, too. There’s the aging hippie with his long, white “Freak Brothers” beard and black bandana, folded meticulously to hold back his long grey hair. There’s the TCU student with his “Horned Frogs” t-shirt, tapping on his laptop just as I am. There are the “baristas,” in their company-required white shirts, khakis and green aprons.

My uniform changes on the weekends, when I get out the shorts, the sneakers, the t-shirt and become Fun Daddy. Different moments in life require different uniforms.

I’ll tell you a secret about myself. There’s one guy whose uniform I totally envy, and if I could pull it off, I’d totally have the same one. I think without the hair, however, it would just look silly. But one thing I'll say for J.D.'s look: It sure ain't conventional...