Cultural Encounter- Wooden Clogs
I have always been told that New York abounds with many ‘different’ people (to put it gently), so I have come accustomed to not being surprised by the varying absurdities that I may come in contact with throughout the day. Still, there are times that my surprise gets the best of me; case in point: yesterday, November 1st.
As I was waiting on the Shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central, just as the doors were about to close, a loud (and very obtrusive) ‘clacking sound’ seemed to grow louder and louder, as at the same time, it grew closer and closer. And suddenly, just as the doors were about to close, a man in his mid-50s squeezed into the subway car. His dress seemed normal enough, and otherwise would not have come to my attention had it not been for the enormous wooden clogs that he was wearing on his feet.
It is not that I haven’t seen a pair of clogs before, I have. It is just that the size of the shoes that he was wearing were larger than one can imagine. In fact, to merely speak of the size of them would not suffice, as they also appeared to be handmade, essentially chiseled out of a block of wood. I know little else about the man other than what his figure presented, and will never know why he was wearing those particular shoes. In a city in which people are generally ignored, it is sometimes interesting to pay attention to things that generally would not go unnoticed anywhere else.
