Tod's

OK, so I'm prolly going to lose a few people with this one: Yesterday, me and the Wifebalm were shopping uptown (like, in the 70s uptown) for conspicuous consumables that I was to buy myself on the occasion of my birfday. I've been jonesing for a pair of Tod's driving mocs for a few years now, and I figured that my 31st was as good a time as any to take the Nestea plunge and drop a few ducats for some shweet footwear.

But like I said -- we're farther uptown than we are accustomed to being, certainly in a retail sense. The other folks walking around the Tod's showroom are already toting Vuitton shopping bags and Hermés bags, so they seem to know what they're doing. I cruise around the loafers exhibiting interest, but no floorpeople bite.

I'm a scum-putz, obviously, and my money is useless.

I have to go to the counter to ask for help, and the woman gives a half eye-roll when she steps out to give me a hand. I show her the suede shoe I'm digging and ask, sheepishly, about how to clean it if it gets rained on. She looks at me worldessly for a second with a glare that suggests I just crawled out of a peat bog like the Piltdown Man.

"Um, you DON'T get these wet. Or any other leather from here either, for that matter."

After being diminished to the size of eight-inches by an anorexic William-and-Mary grad who sells shoes on the Upper West Side, I politely asked to see a pair of said shoes that I would be promptly be using as suede galoshes like a moron.

Yes, I bought the goddamn things, and they're great. Fucker.