Needless to say, it's been a pretty frigid time of the year. Consistently, the temperature has been below freezing, or if it hasn't, the windchill has made it so. On the days that it reaches above 35 degrees, it's like summer.
My general routine for a normal business day is:
a) walk to the subway down the west side of Lenox Ave.
b) subway to 66th St.
c) temp
d) walk to 72nd St.
e) subway to 116th St.
f) walk up east side of lenox ave. and across to my apt.
When it's freezing outside, it takes almost twice as long to accomplish this day as I am struggling not to cry while I walk to the subway.
While accomplishing "F" in my travels one day, I noticed I was walking behind a person about my age. He was swaggering quite well, and all I could think was "wow he must be some sort of badass."
Nope.
For the 5 slow minutes it took for me to wait for the light and walk across the street, I realized that the swagger this "badass" in front of me was doing was actually a very intricate walk almost akin to a "pee pee dance."
Remember in the 90s till maybe 5 or 6 years ago when it was all the rage for dudes to let their pants hang a little?
Remember when it got really ridiculous and you were only really cool if you didn't even try to pull them over your butt? I thought this "I'm really cool so I wear my pants halfway up" style had gone out the window. Apparently I was wrong.
This man/boy/person walking ahead of me was definitely rocking the look. I normally would look away/avert my eyes/think of puppies and kitties, but I could not look away. Mainly for the following reasons:
1) it was about -10 outside and very windy
2) his pants were definitely sitting under his butt cheeks
3) his pants were not draggin on the ground which meant he deliberately got short legged jeans for this
4) his boxers had little spongebob squarepants all over them
I guess no matter what century or decade you're in, someone's going to have their pants hanging too low.
But, the one big thing that really got me was the realization that that badass swagger was a really clever ploy to keep his pants up. He looked so cool, but he walked like a bow-legged cowboy, and the only purpose it served was to keep his trousers up. I never noticed that growing up. But I guess as you get older, you start seeing things more clearly or at least start figuring out the obvious... like the term "brown nosing"... seriously I just figured out what it originally references...
