31 Days of John Moments: Day 2

Day 2!

Linkup at The Nester blog

So the next real "moment" I can think of was probably when I pretty much blatantly insulted John. On purpose.

This was a few months after the cruise I think. John was in a discipleship program at our church. He was dirt poor. He was also a (pretty much) terrible dresser. I can do fashion on the cheeeeeap, so poor is no excuse. I remember talking with some of the girl students close to my age who were in the program with him. We were all agreed that a fashion intervention was needed, but no one had the guts to do it.

John had this particularly heinous fashion choice of wearing sandals with his dress clothes (khakis and a polo or dress shirt) on Sundays. I know, in the right sandal it could be trendy. But his sandals looked like this:

Generic soccer slide sandals. With or without socks, they're bad. He wore his without.

After weeks of seeing these each Sunday, I had had enough. I couldn't think of a genteel way to say it. So, on the front steps of the church, in front of some of the girls in his class, I just flat out told him (this is not verbatim) "Those shoes are terrible. Everyone thinks so. I can't stand them. I'm taking you shoe shopping."

So I think that very evening I picked him up and took him out shoe shopping. Now it took us like 3 hours and 4 stores to find an acceptable replacement. You would think a guy who wears the shoes pictured above wouldn't be all that picky. In this case, you'd be very wrong. I still hate shoe shopping with him til this day. He doesn't really like shoe shopping either. It can take him literally several months to find the right shoe. I can't tell you how many trips we made to Academy the last time he wore out his tennis shoes. Ridiculous.

But anyway, after finally deciding on a shoe that was fashionable and not outrageously expensive (since I was paying), I took him home. Why the heck are men's shoes so expensive, btw? I mean, women's can be, but you can also find cute cheap ones. Not so with men.

He would tell you that this was the beginning of me "throwing" myself at him. I would tell you that his fashion was just that bad. That I was just a concerned citizen and a bit of a Stacy London. He would beg to differ.

Nonetheless, since we didn't know each other well enough to be outright cranky then, we had a pretty good time. And we ended up with these shoes:

Not the actual ones, he wore them out a couple years ago, but they were this model. With a faint tonal dragon on them.

It makes me smile just remembering...