An Overindulgence of Crocs
Last summer I did something very much on purpose to see if I could handle the trauma. I bought a pair of black Crocs to take and wear around Western Ireland during our family vacation, with the idea that I would dispose of them there (they are $45 shoes after all and made of cheap plastic) rather than lug them home in the suitcase. This was a new concept for me but I have heard of other people who treat certain inexpensive clothing as disposable for travel purposes. I can’t say that I spent much time considering the ecofriendliness of this program because I assumed that some frugal housekeeper in Scotland would save the Crocs and give them to one of their large needy nephews. Since coming out here to San Diego, I have gone through a clothing consolidation and find myself with some ten pairs of Crocs. Before you get too exercised over that excess, I will remind you that I have, after considerable thinning of the herd, perhaps eight pairs of Allen Edmonds dress shoes, any one of which equal all ten pairs of Crocs in value. The market for used shoes is pretty limited and when I’ve tried to donate them to a needy nephew I’ve been reminded of our sartorial generation gap.
Out here I have very quickly fallen into wearing Crocs probably 80% of the time. Putting on socks seems almost barbaric to me and I really only do it when I’m off to ride my motorcycle or have somewhere formal or important to go to (which has not happened much in COVID time). For some reason, the shape, fit and ease of Crocs work for me. They are wider and accommodate my higher instep quite nicely. They are foot form-fitting and nicely aerated and come in a wide variety of colors and styles. I do not go so far as to add flair to the button holes the way kids are prone to do, but it’s nice to know that I can if I get to the point of needing help distinguishing right from left. And of course, at under $50 per pair, I have little or no concern about what becomes of them. That said, I do have my favorite pairs and those are showing a bit of wear, so I thought to look through the online selection and order a few newer styles.
I wear a 13-14 shoe and generally need a wider shoe, preferably EEE. Shoe sizing has never gone global and I generally find that I cannot buy foreign made and sized shoes. I’m not sure why Americans should be larger footed than the monster German, Dutch and Scandinavian men I have seen around, but just try and find a roomy shoe from those lands. When I started wearing Crocs I erred on the side of caution and bought size 14. I would say that half the styles stop at 13 and half go to 14. None have widths, but Crocs have always been nice wide shoes. Funny thing, but those size 14 are actually too big to wear around other than as house and garden shoes, but certainly not to, say, drive a car. The size 13 just fit better. So naturally, when I picked out my new Crocs the other day, I went with size 13 (fool me once and all that).
Those Crocs arrived today (three pairs) and the first thing that they caused me to do was to go back to the catalogue since they all have white soles. I hadn’t noticed that and I’m not yet sure how I like that feature. It gives the Crocs a decided boat shoe look, which may be OK, but on three pairs all at once it seemed a bit over the preppy top. I then went about trying on the three pairs, setting aside my worn-in Crocs to test these new models out. Well, two of the pairs, while big enough to get on my foot, were stretched so tightly over my deformed toes to look anything but too tight to wear. Part of the pleasure of Crocs is not having to struggle to get them on. Those two stylish pairs were probably foreign-designed by those small-footed Mediterraneans that make all those other stylish shoes I can’t wear. They were noticeably narrower and just less substantial than I am used to from my friends at Crocs.
The third pair was like all my other Crocs, just newer and shinier with their white soles. The strange thing is that they are still $50 shoes except that now I am wondering when I should wear them first. You would think they were a pair of Jimmy Choo’s.
Tonight I am watching The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini, perhaps the best known Afghan writer to us westerners in the modern era. It is a moving and riveting story of betrayal and redemption and it takes place in the Afghanistan I have grown up knowing about from afar. It starts in the pre-Russian days and goes through the Taliban of today. The staging area for the protagonist Amir’s return to and escape from Kabul is in Islamabad, Pakistan, a place I had occasion to visit two years ago. I visited Karachi, Islamabad and an ammonia installation in the middle of the country, as far away from the western world as you can imagine. We had to use a cadre of armed guards to drive in front and behind us with AK-47’s and a 50mm gun on top. It was quite an experience.
While visiting the ammonia plant in Kashmir, it was an even stranger experience because it was an old Exxon plant that was sold to a local company years before. It had been built as an installation of an American company and as such it looked like many American corporate compounds I have seen around the world. There was a club in the center of a residential community with houses that were occupied by Pakistani engineers and workers, almost 3,000 inhabitants in all. And here’s the thing, no matter what the Taliban or Pakistanis might say about American corporate imperialism, they maintained that plant and that residential community in perfect condition right down to the flowers lining the walkways. It felt so very strange in the midst of an otherwise rather ragged area of the country which generally looked impoverished and undeveloped. It was like a beacon of hope to them for a better lifestyle.
After our tour of the facility and business meetings, we were entertained at the community club with a non-alcoholic party around the sparkling blue swimming pool. As you may know, standard footwear in Pakistan is simple leather sandals. But here in the post-industrial corporate club (turned Pakistani corporate social club) at a festive gathering with their special visitors from America (something I sense was not often seen in those parts), these Pakistanis were putting on the dog. We were decked out in blazers and chinos with our best dress loafers. But our hosts decided that the fashion statement for the evening was to replace their daytime sandals with a nice set of shining Crocs. It turns out that Crocs were both close enough to being practical cool sandals and yet American enough to honor the uniqueness of their compound and their visiting American firemen. And me with my overindulgence of Crocs, and yet without my Crocs.