This is the New Dawn
No one warns a young man planning to get married to a woman about this. But one of your roles as a husband is to pretend to understand why anyone with two feet requires 164 pairs of shoes. Shoes that are bought at roughly fortnightly intervals. I’ll be honest. When we got married, I owned about five pairs of shoes. Brown Bronx shoes, black Bronx shoes, a pair of Puma running shoes, Adidas flops and the black pointy shoes I was wearing when I promised to love, cherish, honour, yadah yadah.
I now own about 20 pairs. Mostly Converse Chuck Taylors. They work well with my sweatpants-and-Tshirt daily uniform. I especially love my Chucks because one of my firstborn’s female friends said they make me look like “a fuckboy”. I’m not quite sure what that is but when you’re 48, anything is better than being identified as “that old guy”.
Much has been said about the propensity of women married to men to “save us money” by spending it on shoes. “Baby, I was walking past Tsonga and realised there was a boot sale. Prices were slashed by up to 60%. Sixty percent! So, I saved us a whopping R1,099. It would have been criminal to leave them there!”
When I was only five years into married life (read: naive upstart), I’d launch into pseudo-economics.
“How did you save us money by spending R1,200? When you entered the store, you had R1,200 more than when you left. How is that saving money?” I’d shriek in my best Blade Nzimande high pitch.
Of course, she got sophisticated and stopped telling me she got new boots. She’d just put them on as were going out to another book signing. Now, I’m not the most attentive fellow when it comes to female shoe wear. However, when you see your wife rocking lime green boots for the first time, even Joe Neanderthal will notice that those boots are very lime green. Even Adolf Hitler realised on that fateful day, as he stepped out of the bunker, that Eva Braun was wearing purple platforms. He probably said casually: “I hope they’re not Russian leather.”
Nowadays I really don’t care anymore. I have my special ways of blowing the children’s inheritance too. Maintaining the fboy image is not as easy as you’d imagine. It takes a lot of work. And sneakers are not cheap. Nor are sweatpants. And sweatpants are my newest obsession. I must own about 30 pairs now. They range from about R120 at Mr Price to about R1,000 at the more affluent shops.
Of course, I’d never splurge a thousand bucks on one pair of sweatpants. So I discovered a neat trick. I’m having a lot of spillage accidents that coincide with me
One of your roles as a husband is to pretend to understand why anyone with two feet requires 164 pairs of shoes
buying new sweatpants. I had a
Zoom meeting while at Hillcrest Corner in KZN the other day. And this is a true story. As I stepped out of the car, a security guard hollers at me: “It looks like you sat on something, grootman.” I checked. Well, I’ll be damned! There was a white blotch on the seat of my pants.
Look, if you’re doing Zoom correctly, no-one should see your bum. But still, it’s the principle. So I went and got myself two pairs of sweatpants because they were on special for R499.95 for two, I swear. This was a “saving” of R500 on the normal price. And also, I had to get two because, hey, who knows when I’ll sit on yoghurt again, right? Right?
My worst transgressions are around the amounts I’m willing to pay for whiskey. Your garden variety Jack Daniel’s is maybe R270 a pop. But I have a preference for
Gentleman Jack, which retails for around R350. It just so happens that every time I get that is because it was on special for R289.95! It was a steal! And then, as she opens the bottle, because she loves herself some bourbon, she rolls her eyes and goes, “Well done, baby.”
My children are now in on the pathological liar act. “Baba, this Playstation game normally goes for R1,595 but for this weekend only, I can get it for just R999. I have to get it!” You want to say: “Sit down Pinocchio. No game for you!” but these requests always coincide with that moment you’ve just poured yourself a glass of the allegedly R289,95 a bottle of Gentleman Jack.
I try to have a “moral of the story” when I write these. I don’t have one this week. I guess my point is that maybe we shouldn’t be so up in arms because the product of cadre employment lands tenders to buy masks at R500 a pop on our behalf. This is the New Dawn. These things happen.