Skip to main content

Let's Take Them Under Our Wings, Part II. . .

 

These are not the shoes I purchased for Young Master Paul, which are new, but they look very similar.

 

The Young Master recently turned 12, so I did something very similar to that my late mother did for me at 12.  

I purchased (discounted items since he is still growing) Paul a pair of Bass Weejun loafers, a navy blazer (it fits him amazingly well), and a new dress belt to go with the khakis, ocbd shirts, and Argyll socks already in his rotation.  I presented him with the new items last night before our (still for now) routine bedtime reading, and he was impressed.  Surprisingly. 

"Wow!" was all he kept saying as he tried on the blazer with shoes and checked himself out in the mirror.  I explained that, with the holiday season fast approaching, he is old enough now to dress for special dinners and occasions a few times a year.  

"But don't worry," I added.  "We won't send you to school in these."

"Thank you, Dad!" he answered with a grateful look as I helped him hang the blazer and stow the new shoes in his closet. 

I also took the opportunity to give him an extra shoe brush that I've had lying around and explained the rudiments of shoe care quickly to him before we resumed the latest Harry Potter novel.  But I'm looking forward to a longer session when we'll actually walk through the process of shining our shoes together like I used to do as a child with my late father.

Hey, it's never too early to begin cultivating a sense of occasion, personal style, and the habit of occasionally wearing something more formal than the usual jeans and Rugby tops as great as those are during off hours and weekends.

-- Heinz-Ulrich 

Comments

  1. Very nice post, Heinz-Ulrich. It sounds like you and your son are both very fortunate. Keep the lessons coming.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, Charlottesville! We do what we can.

    Kind Regards,

    H-U

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All opinions are welcome here. Even those that differ from mine. But let's keep it clean and civil, please.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Popular Posts

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan.  Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake.   J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville.  A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended.  But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available.   In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination.  I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

    A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall.  I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation.  Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold.   Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario.  But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

  A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh.  Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan.  Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt.  Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode.   However, I was not completely useless yesterday!  I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch.  The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings,  took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific.  I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age.  As it is, my sister and