I’d like to think I would have gotten away with it.
No one would ever suspect me.
I’m a white guy with a beard; not only do I fade into a crowd, I am the crowd.
“Just play it cool and no one will even notice,” the Inner Voice said as I pulled up to my assigned spot in the grass pasture. “Just play it cool, boy. Real cool.”
I had on my overcoat and my gray Polo scarf. I looked prepared for 20-degree gale force winds or a quiet walk around TriBeCa.
I had subject changes locked and loaded, little conversational tactics to unleash should the conversation trend toward the topic I most feared.
Yes, I’d have gotten off scot-free, if wasn’t for that meddling city clerk Bob Shuman and his keen eye.
As I sat down behind him next to planning director Jerry Kelley, Shuman leaned to face me and uttered the words I had been dreading to hear:
“Cliff, why are you wearing tuxedo pants?”
I rattled off a quick response and began busying myself with other things, attempting to skirt the issue.
Surrounded by the upper crust of Alabama’s economic development community at Monday’s big Pharmavite announcement, I did my best to seem nonchalant, making small talk with trusted city department heads and longtime friends rather than seek out Governor Bentley, Speaker Hubbard or Congressman Rogers as the rest of my media brethren and sistren were trying to do.
I didn’t want to interview or be seen by anyone important, anathema to my duties and role as news editor.
This past Monday was no ordinary Monday. The normal rules of behavior were deemed not to apply.
In fact, a new personal rule was derived from the incident in question:
Never wear your Halloween costume to work if you’ll have to be in public.
Thankfully, I wasn’t dressed as Barney the Dinosaur or Antoine Dodson, costumes that would have been impossible to hide.
No, I went for the refined, debonair sophistication of a discontinued tux I had the fortune to snag for $20 at a closing tux rental place.
With my handy tux, my costume was complete: I could be any Republican president with a beard from 1865 to 1896.
(Let’s just say Rutherford B. Hayes and be done with it.)
Yes, I wore my tux to work with pride, thinking my coworkers would get a kick out of my previously undiscovered “fun” side. They did.
I simply made the mistake of not remembering that my work more than often requires public interaction, and, while I wish they all did, not every member of the public knows and appreciates my many eccentricities.
My co-workers don’t bat an eyelash if I show up in an outlandish getup. They know me.
I even showed up to cover some items at the high school later in the day without the overcoat and scarf, in full costume. Few, if any, paid any attention, because, they, too, are used to me.
But, I dare say one of the “bigwigs” on the dais Monday might have thought it more than a bit odd for a bearded chap with a tux to shove a reporter’s notebook into their face and ask questions.
The governor’s bodyguards would have undoubtably taken me out before I could get anywhere near him, I’m sure.
While I often get a reputation for taking joy in the crazy persona I’ve cultivated for myself here, I didn’t feel the need to spread my infamy statewide.
I’m okay with all of you knowing I’m nutbar crazy, because, well, all of you are similarly afflicted.
It’s the Opelika in us, and, no, there is no cure.
But, just because we have inborn crazy within us, it doesn’t mean we always have to broadcast it.
Sometimes, we have to throw on the overcoat and the scarf, even if it’s 58 degrees and you’re sweating more than Big Cheryl from the Richard Simmons’ exercise videos.
There’s a fine line between crazy and insane, no doubt.
I love crazy, but publicly wearing a tuxedo to cover a major economic announcement for my town?
I may be crazy, folks, but I’m not insane.
Well... not yet, at least.
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