Barack Obama was not the first to wear flip flops in the Oval Office:

That and other flip flop trivia here.

I wore exclusively flip flops up until the time I moved to the Midwest.  My standby ride was the 99 cent pair found at the pharmacy checkout line. They would disintegrate in about a month but 12 bucks for a year of footwear is like Divine Grace. As a bonus, that day when the stem blows out and you wind up dragging the rubber carcass around is bound to attract some fun conversations.

My high water mark came in the 9th grade which saw the greatest innovation in flip flop history:  Cheap Charlie’s Sole Suckers. These are nothing more than slabs of polyurethane that you literally glue to the bottom of your feet.  No flipping, no flopping. (Also, it turns out no running, skateboarding, stepping in puddles, or being victimized by the dreaded flat tire else you destroy the fragile adhesive and spend the rest of the day barefoot and sticking to dirt, shag carpet, NoDoz, PeeChees, Djarums, NoSkote, bus fare, bottlecap rebuses, Rocky Horror rice, Galaga, duct tape, Space Shuttle debris, jacuzzi bubbles, and hall passes.)

I passed through the flojo phase, and now I am a shamelessly gentrified Reef-o-phile once the temperature rises above 60F which in Chicago is the day before it rises above 80F.

Porkpie plié:  Courtney Conklin Knapp.