slider way, give it all you got

Here's a crackpot theory for you, and, as all the best theories do, it has to do with Robert Redford, who died last week at the age of 89, and shoes.

The only films in which Redford starred which I could say with complete confidence that I've seen are Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, The Sting, All The President's Men, The Great Waldo Pepper, Out Of Africa and Pete's Dragon. The first three there are obviously classics, the fourth is a bit of fluff with some surprisingly dark moments thrown in (such as Susan Sarandon falling off an aeroplane, or when Redford's character has to cave a fellow aviator's head in with a hunk of timber to prevent him burning to death in his crashed plane), the fifth is a bit turgid for my taste and I can't honestly remember Redford even being in the last one, presumably because I was distracted by a giant furry green CGI dragon.

Anyway, the central point made in a number of the obituaries was that it was easily to be distracted from his acting ability by how absurdly handsome he was, something easy even for a tediously vanilla heterosexual bloke such as myself to appreciate. That is something that Redford himself complained about (but not too much; I mean, come on) in the context of it limiting his range of roles. The quote that was circulating on the internet after his death was this one from director Mike Nichols in relation to Redford being considered for the role that eventually went to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate:

“I interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands, of men,” Nichols explained. “I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser.’ And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘O.K., have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.” 

What you might be asking at this point is: yes, but what does all this have to do with shoes? Well, I'll tell you. I was at Newport Leisure Centre the other day taking the girls to a swimming lesson, and there were several people there sporting what these days seems to be quite a common footwear combo of shortish white sports socks pulled up quite tight, and sliders. I assume the original idea was to give some sort of post-training-session Premiership footballer vibe, but it seems pretty ubiquitous now. One of the Dads who was supervising the activities of his child in the showers even had socks and sliders on and must have been getting wet socks. 

So, getting to the point, my thesis is this: there are two sorts of people in the world, with two fundamentally different sorts of outlook on it, and life. The first sort either apply absolutely no thought whatsoever to what might happen beyond two minutes from now, or have a sort of blithe assurance that all will be well, nothing can or will go wrong, and they won't ever get into a position where they get stranded (e.g. if the car breaks down) on the way home from the swimming run and have to hike across a field in the dark in sliders, flip-flops, whatever. The other group of people assume that these things may well happen and that some more robust ready-for-anything footwear may be required. I myself for instance do own a pair of flip-flops, but they are strictly for home or holiday use and never worn in any situation where I might be required to do anything involving walking any significant distance or driving a car. I might wear my Converses or Vans if I'm in a cazh mood and the weather is warm and dry, with the caveat that I probably wouldn't wear the Converses for the swimming run as the thin canvas material and those two little instep holes mean they suck up water pretty effectively.

Looking at it another way I think this probably also divides down the nerd/jock boundary, where the nerd contingent might be slightly more inclined to get into the habit of wearing shoes that facilitate a quick getaway in the event of trouble. To put it another way, people who might feel a need to escape from other people (anyone who was ever bullied at school, for instance) might be more inclined to wear escape-facilitating footwear than those who might more generally expect other people to run away from them.

The pursuer/pursuee (yeah, I know, not really a word) model works for linking this back to Robert Redford as well - imagine (if you can) being someone who looked like him. I don't want to use the phrase "beating them off with a shitty stick" but it seems pretty appropriate here; it's hard to imagine him ever having to expend very much effort to be in the company of someone who wanted to get into his pants. The only advantage for the rest of us who might have to work slightly harder is that (this is what I choose to believe, anyway) since we had to work a bit harder at attracting a partner in the first place, and additionally might have more of an incentive to keep them around, we might be more inclined to generosity and attention to detail in the bedroom department, if you know what I mean, ladies.