Shoes Make the Man

Shoes Make the Man

Julius Caesar declared that an army fought on its stomach. Or maybe it was Napoleon. In any case, who ever it was said that if the troops were well fed they would fight well. Fortunately we live next to Canadians rather than Vandals and so the worst battles we have to fight is over whether a Canadian quarter is worth the same as a US quarter. And as for our stomachs, this is Wisconsin for heaven’s sake – the second fattest state in the Union! We have stomachs! So, the only real way to tell the destiny of a man in our modern world is to look at his shoes. In Julius Caesar’s time there were exactly two choices: sandals or no sandals. If you wore sandals you were destined to be a noble. If, on the other hand, your feet were sans sandals (Latin, I think, for bare-footed) you were destined to be a slave. Noble or slave, that’s it, it was one or the other. Nobles got the money, the girl, the army, and the fun. Slaves got the work. Today things are pretty much the same and you can still tell a man’s destiny from his shoes.

There are four, and only four types of shoes in the world – and four types of men to fill them. The four types of men are: first, the successful guy; second, the guy who looks successful but isn’t; and third, the guy who doesn’t “give a damn” about success and wants you to know it; and fourth, the guy who keeps asking “what’s success?” Each wears a different type shoe.

Successful guys wear loafers. That’s right, loafers. If you think of successful guys just think “Jimmy Carter.” Here is a guy that did a really horrid job of running the nation but who is widely acclaimed anyway. He wears loafers. He’s successful because he looks like he’s accomplishing something at the very instant he’s accomplishing exactly nothing. Just like loafers. Loafers, as the name implies, are those shoes meant for “doing nothing” while you look like you might, someday, really do something. In Jimmy Carter’s case his entire image is built on his loafers. When somebody needs someone to fly some place to “give peace a chance” they send Jimmy Carter and his loafers. So there he goes, does a little talking, a lot of listening, and pronounces the two parties finally and completely reconciled. He gets honored, glorified, and paid a lot of money. The two parties get to pretend for a week or so that everything is hunky-dory. That’s the ultimate in success. Look like your working but don’t change anything – and get paid a lot for doing it. Guys who want to be successful, on the other hand, believe they have to accomplish something. That’s their mistake. They wear Oxfords.

Now, before you get all snooty, understand that by Oxford’s I don’t mean, well, just Oxfords. I mean that these guys wear shoes with two things in common – first, they cost a lot of money; and second, they are really, really uncomfortable. I mean the guy wearing Oxfords spends six months pay buying a pair of shoes that give him hours of excruciating pain. All morning he is in pain and the rest of the day he is a pain. All of which enables these guys, mostly lawyers and stockbroker types, to run over each other and everybody else without the least compunction to “feel their pain.” After all, you don’t feel anybodies’ pain when your feet are screaming, “Get up that corporate ladder you idiot!” And why, you ask would feet be crying “Get up the corporate ladder you idiot!?” -- because they instinctively know that if you happen to stumble to the top of the corporate ladder, even over the bodies of your fellow man, you get to wear loafers! Feet don’t have to be told, they know!

Yes, the feet know. Take the third type of guy. His feet demand sensible, heavy, hard-core, work boots because they know that sensible, heavy, hard-core, work boots are needed. Why you ask? Because the guy does sensible, heavy, hard-core work. Yea, really – the guy works for a living. The loafer guy thinks he works and the Oxford guy sponges off the work of others, but the work boot guy actually gets the job done. It is his feet that carry the lumber, his feet that tote the freight, and his feet that are “put to the fire” if things don’t get done. If you don’t believe me think about the prime loafer, Jimmy Carter. Has he ever been fired? Even when the North Koreans threatened to bomb the South Koreans to smithereens even though Jimmy had just pronounced their disputes finally and fully settled? NO…they gave him some medal and another big fat check! And did they give him his walking papers when some poor schmuk couldn’t even make the infinitesimally tiny payments on the infinitesimally tiny house Mr. Carter and his friends built for him? Not on you life. He, you see, is a “loafered” guy! “Loafered” guys are not responsible – for anything! And they don’t get fired! As for the Oxford guys, can you think of a single lawyer or stockbroker who has been fired? If you’re your stocks go up, you move into a mansion, your stockbroker moves into a bigger mansion, and everybody’s happy. But if stocks go down you move into your parents’ basement and your stockbroker buys your parents’ basement. Get fired? Not a chance. Oxford guys never get fired.

Work-boot guys, on the other hand, get fired. They get fired if the lumber is crooked. They get fired because the manager is an idiot. They get fired if the sun comes up or it doesn’t. It’s sort of an unwritten rule of management. If something goes wrong fire some guy in work boots. And if a lot goes wrong, fire the damn lot of them. In fact, among guys in work boots getting fired is a badge of honor.

“Hey, ya here, Joey got the can” one guy will say to the other.

“Lucky fart,” the other guy will respond. “What the hell did he do?”

“Told the boss to take the job and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
“Into his Oxfords?”

See, these guys get it. They were work boots and they sweat. They stay at Motel 2 because they couldn’t afford a Motel 6 and they drink beer because wine doesn’t come in pop-top cans. And they don’t wear Oxfords because if you wear Oxfords you have to hate your fellow man. These guys get the job done and then get fired. And they take their boots with them.

Tennis shoe guys, on the other hand, throw their tennis shoes out. Every couple of week or so, when the odor begins to send off alarms across the nation they throw out the old pair and buy another. Either the odor or getting fired will do it. That’s how they live. Change of job, change of shoes. You see these tennis shoe guys don’t have a clue about success. They keep changing occupations because they forget that they are supposed to work for living. The equation, “work=pay” is foreign to them, like the factory where their tennis shoe were made. So here they are, lacing up a new pair of tennis shoes and thinking, “I’m forty-two and I wonder what I’m supposed to do when I grow up?” These guys don’t have mid-life crises they have a crises that starts when they are born and just hangs around – unlike their tennis shoes. And what type of jobs do these guys have? Anything that appears to be work but never breaks a sweat. Usually they are actors or writers. Well, actually, waiters wishing they were acting, actors temporarily waiting tables while they perfect the art of acting, actors acting as if they were waiting tables, or waiters acting as if they were actors waiting tables. You get the picture. Or, like I said, maybe writers. Writers writing about actors waiting tables. Writers acting as if they could write about actors waiting tables. Or writers wishing they were actors. Same job, different focus. Same shoe.

So you see, the shoes make the man. Julius Caesar wore sandals. Jimmy Carter wears loafers. Lawyers and stockbrokers wear Oxfords, and I wear tennis shoes. I hear that somewhere there are some guys that were work boots, but I haven’t met them. I probably should make a point of it since I have to get some work done.