Not many things about our daily lives are easier now than they were before the pandemic. But dressing for the workplace is certainly less complicated and time consuming.
Since Zoom and all these other forms of video communications have replaced in-person meetings, most of us have not worried much about whether our socks match our pants or even each other.
Dress shirts and ties are not required for most business meetings anymore. A nice polo shirt looks dressy now compared to the things some folks are wearing on these electronic gatherings.
Stiff leather shoes are in closets gathering dust and might never see the light of day again. Sneakers, sandals and flip-flops are fine for videos that focus mostly on heads and shoulders.
My old friend Bob Griffin, the legendary television personality in Shreveport, would not have needed to alter his attire much for the global pandemic.
Bob was way ahead of his time in the concept of combining apparel that provided both comfort and propriety like people around the world are doing now on Zoom and Webex.
The first time I was in the studio with Bob for a broadcast, he wore a white shirt, tie and sport coat for the camera, but his cargo shorts, floppy white socks and tennis shoes were out of view.
After the show, he ditched the coat and tie, put on a golf shirt, and we went to lunch.
Bob, who died earlier this year before the pandemic hit, needed a variety of apparel in his early days on TV. He was doing news, sports, weather and a live cartoon show for kids when his wardrobe was topped off by a straw, flat-top skimmer hat.
Toy companies flooded Bob with samples of products that he gave away as prizes on the Bob and His Buddies show. One of those new-fangled toys left bumps and bruises on my son when he was in elementary school.
Bob would spend afternoons at my house when he came to town for Northwestern football games and bring my kids toy company samples. One was an early version of a “water wiggle” type toy that attached to a water hose.
When we hooked it to the hose, the water pressure sent the hard plastic cartoon figure flying and gyrating wildly, flapping my son in the head and body before we could turn the water off.
Bob was distraught. The next time he visited, he brought a toy doctor’s kit.
My interest in wardrobe matters like the attire folks are wearing for Zoom meetings goes back to the 1940s when my mother dressed me in those awful riding pants with puffs on each side.
Old black and white snapshots of birthday parties and such show other boys in jeans and overalls and me in the prissy riding pants.
I have worked hard since then to dress conventionally and much like my peers even when I started my journalism career in New Orleans and we all wore short sleeve white shirts and thin, clip-on black ties.
All these decades since, I have been properly attired in dress shirts and pants, ties, sport coats and all that. But I have also kept shorts and T-shirts handy for tennis and other activities.
My late friend Tom Murchison and I played a lot of tennis matches after work. He didn’t want folks at his law office to know when he left early some days that it was for a tennis match.
The courts were near my house, so Tom would go by and change in the utility room off the carport. One day when he had on nothing but tennis shoes and bent over to get his shorts, my big boxer dog Bandit snuck in and stuck his cold nose on Tom’s rear end.
When Tom got to the courts, he told me about it and said, “I made a new opening in your utility room.”
With mostly Zoom meetings now, I can just wear decent looking shirts and nobody knows if I have on shorts, sweatpants, jeans or some of those riding britches with the puffy pockets.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES