It's one thing to stick out like a sore thumb. It's entirely another to be truly unique. I hadn't quite made that distinction then, and I may not have achieved it now, but at least these days I can tell the difference between class and style. Not that I claim to have either. But at least I know the /difference/. Not everyone can say that, and that's a fact.

I've never blended in. When I was young I used to think blending in would be the epitome of happiness but I'll be the first to admit I was a pretty dumb kid. Standing out is better. It's much less stressful to blatently announce your presence everytime you walk into a room than to focus all your energies on skulking around in corners hoping no one will notice you. That way, if you do something stupid, people will have already held a questionable opinion of you, and you won't disappoint them. I do hate disappointing people.

It's a given that the wardrobe makes a statement about a person before they even open their mouth. Me, of course, being an exception--I've never had to worry about my wardrobe speaking first. Second, maybe. But not first. Which is why I didn't worry about wearing er.../talkative/ clothes until I was out of my teens. At that point, however, I decided there was no harm in overdoing things.

In those days--my teenage years, that is--I boasted a rather dull wardrobe. Blacks, browns...anything that faintly resembled mud was my spectrum of choice. That is to say, colors--/real/ colors--were entirely out of the question. I had always felt that I was somehow above color...or, perhaps, below it. I'm still not sure what I was thinking. Then again, I'm not sure of a lot of things I did as a teenager. Like the thing with the dental floss and Gary Trent's pet ferret...Boy, I'll never live /that/ one down.

In any case, the day came when I woke up with the realization that has staggered many a human being coming of age: Clothes Make the Man. It had never occurred to me before that I needed to express myself visually (having mastered other senses) but There It Was. Having not the vaguest idea of where to start, however, I decided to let the Fates lead me to my new wardrobe.

You may as well know that the Fates have absolutely no direction sense, because I wound up stumbling about the city for what seemed like 217 years looking for my new Self. By the time I collapsed onto a busstop bench I had come to the conclusion that mud was as good a color as any to live one's life in and that I should probably stop listening to what my brain says at 5 in the morning, especially before I'd paid homage to the Coffee Gods.

At the realization that I hadn't yet that day proven my loyalty to the Caffeine Deities, I headed towards a questionable café situated near the busstop. I say 'questionable' because of the way the place didn't smell anything like a café, but rather like a marijuana den. Breathing deeply, I stepped inside.

At first I thought the place was abandoned until someone popped up from behind the counter. I hate to use the term 'popped up' because people are always popping up in bad stories but this guy really popped up, like a jack-in-the-box when cranked all the way to the end of the song. But the way he showed up wasn't the strange part.

I squinted at him. He was short and squat, and he wore an extremely wide-brimmed hat. The overall effect was that he looked exactly like a giant mushroom. I actually found myself wondering if he was poisonous.

I guess we stared at eachother for some time. I noticed that the mushroom was wearing a particularly bizarre jacket. Well, bizarre in an understated sort of way. That is to say, it stood out, but not as much as the fact that the guy looked like a bearded, ambulatory Wonderland Toadstool.

The fungus broke the silence, and tried to take my coffee order. Instead of ordering my usual triple espresso, I heard myself asking him where he had gotten his jacket. At that he got all pleased and puffed himself up--told me he had designed it himself, and did I want to see another one? Figuring I had already dug myself into a fashion hole, I told him I did.

He kinda hopped over to a closet and, with the aid of a stepladder, opened it to reveal what was, in all honesty, the single stupidest article of clothing I had ever seen. Checkered and fringed, it looked like Geronimo Goes Vaudville. He proudly informed me that there was no other jacket in the world like it, for which I admit I was thankful.

But when he asked if I wanted to actually try it on, I was apparently so overwhelmed by the thing's garishness that the next thing I knew, I had traded my modest cowhide jacket for the Checked Wonder. The toadstool shoved me towards a mirror so I could see how bizarre I looked.

I guess it was then that I actually began to believe that Clothes Do, Indeed, Make the Man. Make him look clueless, and cocky, and utterly pretentious. And that, I realized, might come in handy. I bought the jacket on the spot.

Stepping back outside, I noticed a difference immediately. People were noticing me, and I mean visually. They were actually looking directly at me, and I can tell you, that was a novelty. It didn't seem so bad, either.

Best of all, old Father Mushroom threw in a free mochaspressolatte. You can't get a much better deal than that.

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