Indian Boots

My father has been trying to "man me up" for quite a few years. After a trip to New Mexico, he came back with these thick leather boots as a gift. Here is how the interaction went:

Father: Casey, I went to New Mexico and all the guys on the Rez wear these boots. They're from a store like Farm and Fleet, except the New Mexico version.

Me: (completely unimpressed) Wow, thanks dad.

So my "Indian boots" as I had dubbed them, sat in my closet waiting for winter. The first snowfall came, I begrudgingly pulled them out of the closet. I slipped my foot into the left boot and found them to be surprising comfortable. For a month, I was happy that my father bought me these manly boots.

After about a month it all ends. My boots are seen on such hot celebs as Brittany Spears and Jennifer Aniston. My manly Ugg boots have become the number one fashion item for girls. Like a ship that somehow sinks and THEN bursts into flames, I've been caught utterly off-guard. Apparently the price of my boots shot up to $400 and now come in pastel pink.

Not too long after this paradigm shift, my father comes down to Madison for a meeting. As we walk down State Street, he notices the ubiquitous nature of the Ugg boots he bought for his son. The only problem is that they are affixed to the legs of not 'Sconnie men, but Coastie girls.

When I was in high school and I told my father I was quitting football to be in The Wiz (the hip '70s update of the Wizard of Oz whose film version featured Michael Jackson) it was over dinner. When I told my father that I had decided to become an ethical vegetarian, it was over dinner (chicken incidentally). It seemed only fitting that I tell my father the boots that were to impress an air of masculinity into my step had become the quintessential accessory for urbane young women. To make matters worse, these weren't Midwestern girls, but those Jewish American Princesses who weren't bright enough to get into Columbia and, by default, came to Wesconsin.

Word of my decisions to join the drama club over football and leafy greens over bloody flesh were met with looks of defeat. The Indian warrior in my father had yet again failed to instill the savage pride that is the hallmark of young Indian men.

But this conversation was different. After I told him that these boots were now "girl boots" he put down his forkful of prime rib and smiled.

I had prepared myself for anger, dismay, even accusations of homosexuality, but hadn't even entertained possible laughter.

For a few uneasy moments I just watched as he sat laughing in front of me, but not at me. My father is not one to add injury to insult, in all my years of below-average masculine output, he had not once derisively guffawed at my shortcomings.

He was laughing at himself. He had bought the boots. He had tried his best to make me manlier and even that failed. It wasn't him or me, it was Fate. Long ago, Fate had decided I would be flight not fight, left-field not right, Omega Male not Alpha.

Though it still is emasculating to think that even if I found a way to kill a lion with only cunning and an obsidian blade at my disposal, the press would probably lose the photo of me standing over the slain beast and print an older stock picture of me completing a gingerbread house at the Ten Percent Society's Winter Solstice Party.

Still, I don't really wear my Ugg boots until it gets completely unbearable in sneakers. As the Romans said, you can't deny Fate, but you can push it back a couple of months.