Real Men Wear Sandals

Steve and I have a fundamental disagreement about weather. Steve likes cold weather and I like warm weather. When it's cold outside, I want to stay inside with a book and a fire and maybe a little gun in case a polar bear wanders in. Or, even better, I want to board a plane to Fiji. When it's warm outside, Steve wants to die.

It was warm this weekend in London.

I packed my summer trousers and my sandals and my sunglasses and was all prepared for summer in the city, but Steve doesn't own summer clothing. He relies solely on his indignation that the world warms up in the summer to carry him through the heat. I've pointed out to him that to enjoy warm weather, you must make concessions to the heat. You must wear light-weight clothing and sandals.

Steve balks at the idea of sandals. He was taught in grade school not to wear them. But it was really warm in London this weekend and after he looked around at all the men in the tube wearing sandals and after he sweated through the city for a day and after I pointed out that Marmot Dad wears sandals, Steve agreed that perhaps "shoes with holes" would be appropriate in London.

We bought him these at the Shepherd's Bush market. His first sandals.


They gave him blisters, so when we reached Leicester Square, I left him to buy our theatre tickets while I ran down the street to buy band-aids. When I returned, I couldn't find him. I walked all around the square, where a festival sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church was taking place, but I didn't see him. I started to worry that the heat and the blisters had all become too much for him and that he'd passed out in a bush from sun exposure. I started scanning the ground for a pair of sandal-clad feet collapsed on the pavement.

Eventually I did locate him. He'd become engrossed in a conversation with some festival volunteers who were thrilled to talk to someone who believes in God. They chatted with him about his blistered feet and suggested that he have the Jesus who was wandering the grounds give him a free foot wash. He declined. He covered his blisters with band-aids instead and we bought gelato, the most important thing for staying cool in the summertime.