April 23, 2013
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The Daily News1 “Hey Mr. Harrington, you look dapper today.”2 Haha.
3 Dapper.
4 Same guy that asked me a few weeks ago, “Mr. Harrington, may I go to the room at where I may rest?”
5 I’m sure he was buttering me up for the same request, but when I looked up, he just pointed with his thumb, like a hitchhiker with a secret.
6 Always at the beginning of the period.
7 Wise lad.
8 I let him.
9 He’s a guy from my Disney class.
10 They’re a class that is all ears and braces.
11 Delightful group. You don’t always get an absolute perfect class.
12 There’s always some guy who will walk in front of you mid-lecture and try the thumb action.
13 I still nod, but can you imagine?
14 The difference between manners and no manners is striking sometimes.
15 Don’t get me going.
16 Anybody looking?
17 I must say I DID look pretty dapper yesterday. I had swag. We all have those days.
18 My colors all somehow matched, even though I dressed in a tornado of darkness.
19 Sometimes you luck out.
20 Other times it looks like your window was open during a tornado and everything flew off the clothesline and onto your body.
21 Yesterday I wound up looking like some sort of dandy gangsta from the ‘thirties.
22 My tie somehow matched my shirt, even though it was an offshoot of light green, which you wouldn’t think would look good.
23 My tie yesterday had a sort of light red with the same offshoot of light green somehow running through it.
24 None of it was too intentional.
25 I did most of it on one foot with one eye open.
26 You know how you do.
27 And I wore the Bogart.
28 That’s my Humphrey Bogart hat, the one that prompted one kid to say, “Hey nice fedora!”
29 “Thanks. I’m gangsta!”
30 Smiles.
31 Fedora. That sounds like something an old brown shoe like me would wear.
32 I looked like the modern, color version of any mug walking around in a thirties’ picture.
33 I was sort an animated historical figure, only in modern times. No white shirt. Nope.
34 Offshoot of green, with slight red and offshoot of green tie.
35 And the Bogart.
36 If I look back on old pictures of myself, I will see that sort of trend even when I was just a little guy.
37 My Mom once got me a Bat Masterson costume for Halloween, complete with the cane that unscrews so that if I wanted to,
I could have hidden a gun.38 Bat Masterson was this old television show that had yet another fastest gun in the West.
39 His gimmick was that he always looked dapper.
40 Maybe that’s why I smiled when that student said that.
41 Dude.
42 It’s 2013.
43 Nobody uses a word like “dapper” anymore.
44 In fact, most students have no idea as to what a “dude” is.
45 They don’t know.
46 As I recall, a dude is a guy from the East Coast who comes out west and tries to dress like a cowboy, but who is
way too fastidious. He doesn’t have the rawhide-nature of real cowpokes.47 Sadly, it has turned into some weird salutation that has become a permanent part of our modern repartee. More’s the pity.
48 I just loved in old movies when a dude would walk into a saloon, only to be bullied by beaten down badgers and weasels
who used to be gunslingers.49 The guy would usually be dressed to the nines, only in pretty cowboy clothes.
50 And he would usually be able to waste the bullies with a lightning-quick gun.
51 That repeating premise always made for entertaining television.
52 Dude.
53 I think I’m going to be dapper today too.
54 My shirt has square buttons.
55 They are gold. It is a light blue and light gold shirt.
56 I’m accenting it with a light red and tie with tiny blue squares that are raining down.
57 Even though it’s going to be a bazillion degrees, I’m going to wear a square-shouldered tuxedo jacket.
58 It’s slightly blue.
59 And my Bogart. It will be angled just so.
60 So I gottago.
61 I look like quicksilver today.
62 Dapper.
63 Gangsta.
64 Have a GREAT Tuesday.
65 See you again.
66 Peace.
~H~
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